


The Menace o 
Spiritualism 




Elliot O'DotinclI 

WITH A • FORBWOED^ BJ 
FATHER BERNARD VAUGKA!^ 



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CSFXRraUT DEPOSIT. 



THE MENACE 
OF SPIRITUALISM 




THE MENACE OF 
SPIRITUALISM 



By 
ELLIOT 9'DONNELL 

AUTHOR OF "ghostly PHENOMENA," " THE HAUNTED 

MAN," "twenty years' EXPERIENCE AS A 

GHOST HUNTER," ETC., ETC. 



WITH A FOREWORD BY 

Father Bernard Vaughan, S.J. 



LONDON 

T. WERNER LAURIE, LTD. 

30 NEW BRIDGE STREET, E.C. 4 






M' 






^■^ 



DEDICATED 

by permission to 

His Grace 

THE 

DUKE OF NEWCASTLE 



FOEEWOED 

Although I do not subscribe to all the 
doctrine and teachings expressed between 
the covers of this brochure, yet do I gladly 
recommend it to the public as an exposition 
of the menace of Spirituahsm in our midst. 
The pubhc has plenty of temptations to 
encounter on the road of liTe without its 
being enticed and drawn into these side- 
shows where freaks, frauds, and fiends may 
rob them not only of their money, but, 
perhaps, even leave them stripped of their 
physical outfit and of their moral attributes. 
Naturally I do not place all under the same 
damnation because I can but judge of the 
ruin wrought through Spiritualism by the 
cases that have come under my own obser- 
vation. But you may depend upon it that 
the CathoHc Church would not forbid her 
children to have anything at all to do with 
this insidious form of necromancy unless 
she was satisfied that harm only and no 
good comes out of it. Her experience of 

1 A 



2 FOREAVORD 

Spiritualism covers nearly two thousand 
years, and she seems to regard it, not as 
a means of getting into communion with 
saints, but as a snare trapping you into 
communion with devils. 

I have, on not a few occasions, been 
brought into contact with both men and 
women who have been caught, like moths 
in a candle-flame, by these false flash- 
lights, and lured on to quicksands from 
which there was no saving them. When 
lost they shout out that they are saved. 

It looks as if the penalty of trying to 
force the hand of God, and of lifting the 
veil to communicate with the Great Beyond 
was total loss of that childlike and clinging 
faith which is the priceless inheritance of 
the sons of God — " Unless you become as 
a little child." 

Up to date in rare cases only have I been 
able to persuade necromancers to shake off 
Spiritistic practices and to return once more 
to the Church of their childhood. They 
tell you that they have actually seen, and 
that it is more blessed to have seen than to 
believe. When their choice lies between 
Christianity and Necromancy they choose 
the latter. 



FOEEWORD 3 

To some of us who have studied Spirit- 
uaHsm in many of its phases, the wonder 
is that any persons, with common sense 
and appreciation of Hfe's values, can allow 
themselves to be sucked into such a vortex. 

Firstly, let me remind you that no one 
attending a seance in which spirits from 
the vast deep make themselves heard or 
seen can prove that their spirit visitants are 
the creatures they claim to be. How can 
anyone disprove them to be satanic spirits? 
You may be sure that evil spirits can quite 
as cleverly personate the dead as music- 
hall artists do the living. 

Secondly, let me ask^ what have spirits, 
after thousands of years practice, revealed 
to mankind calculated to be of any prac- 
tical service to humanity? As yet they 
have not even solved the problem as to 
what is a sardine, or what a new-laid egg. 

There is a great deal to say against 
Spiritism, but not much that I know of for 
it. But I shall be reminded that it has 
disproved the doctrine of materialism and 
proved the immortahty of man. Not so; 
it may have only proved the immortality 
of demons. It is a queer blend of immor- 
tality and infidelity. If the spirits, who 



4 FOEEWORD 

speak through mediums, live, on the other 
side, the Hves they describe, then the other 
side ought to be the soul's probation for 
this — not this for that. 

My advice to all readers of this spirited 
exposure of Spiritualism is to shun it as they 
would cocaine. In neither drug is to be 
discovered the Will of God, which is man's 
end in Hfe, but in both may be found 
ruin of body and loss of soul. This very 
morning I heard of a girl, who, being told 
in a seance by her deceased lover that he 
would not live on the other side without 
her, drowned herself to join him, not, I 
fancy, in heaven — '' Notum fac mihi, 
Domine, finem meum." 



^^A 




CtJOt.^ 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

FOREWORD I 

NOTE BY AUTHOR 7 

CHAP. 

I. "spiritualism"— WHAT IS IT ? . 9 

II. HOW SPIRITUALISM TRIES TO DISTORT 

THE OLD TESTAMENT . . .21 

III. SPIRITUALISM AND THE NEW TESTA- 
MENT 41 

IV. SPIRITUALISM AND THE CHURCHES . 66 

V. THE PHENOMENAL SIDE OF SPIRIT- 
UALISM AND ITS EFFECT ON THE 
HEALTH 107 

VI. THE DANGER OF FRAUD OF ALL KINDS 

AT STANCES 146 



NOTE: — In presenting this volume to 
the public I desire it to he perfectly clear 
that the views in it apply to Spiritualism 
only (not to Psychical Research, ivhich, 
inasmuch as it touches on the investigation 
of spontaneous manifestations in haunted 
houses, etc., is, in my opinion, justifiable) , 
and do not detract in any way from the 
attitude I have hitherto adopted in my 
writings toicards spontaneous ghostly 
phenomena. 

ELLIOT O'BONNELL. 



THE MENACE OF 
SPIRITUALISM 

CHAPTEE I 

'' SPIRITUALISM " — WHAT IS IT? 

Spiritualism! What does it all mean? 
Can it do us any good ? Has it really come 
to stay? 

These are the questions the ordinary man 
and woman, and the British public in 
general^ are now beginning to ask in down- 
right earnest. For a long time what is 
known as Spirituahsm flourished in com- 
parative obscurity. Apart from its own 
particular adherents, and those who, exis- 
tent in every age, make a point of inquiring 
into all kinds of cults and philosophies, there 
were few who took even the remotest 
interest in it. The vast majority, perhaps, 
9 



10 MENACE OF SPIEITUALISM 

had never even heard of it; and to the bulk, 
at least, of the middle classes, like Psychi- 
cal Eesearch, it was either a mere term, or 
it was classified in the same category as 
ghosts and hobgoblins, and meant nothing 
to them. Then came the Great War, and 
once again the air filled with the cries and 
lamentations of the bereaved; the cries of 
mothers mourning for their sons, the cries 
of wives sorrowing for their husbands. It 
was merely a repetition of the same old 
story, slaughter and desolation, and, in the 
words of the prophet, ' ' Eachel weeping for 
her children, because they were not"; but 
it was a repetition which has proved that 
the world, despite its boastful pretensions 
to an enhghtened Christianity and civilisa- 
tion, has not advanced very far along the 
path of gentleness and toleration; has not, 
as yet, set its foot upon the one and only 
path of real progress. And, as in all times 
of excessive sorrow and bereavement, so 
now, ''Eachel weeping for her children, 
refused to be comforted," those who were 
hit hard and felt acutely the pangs of the 
empty chair and missing form at the family 
table, turned to channels other than mere 
human agency for consolation. Some, in- 



WHAT IS IT? 11 

deed there were who, not entirely ruled and 
regulated by the rush, and tear, and helter- 
skelter of passing events, found what they 
sought in prayer, in the quiet old-time 
faith that had sufficed their forefathers ; but 
the remainder, those whose minds responded 
to the twentieth century's predominating 
cry for constantly increasing speed, and 
whose thoughts were tuned to keep pace 
with telephones and wireless, demanded 
instant demonstration. All the Church 
could do was to tell them to wait, to wait 
and hope, that Christ's promise was one of 
revelation; but of a revelation they must 
not precipitate, must not expect till the hour 
of their own dissolution was at hand. But 
neither waiting nor watching appeals to the 
pioneers and supporters of twentieth-century 
hurry and dispatch. Life may be long; to 
the young an eternity, and no one can be 
expected to wait that length of time for an 
assurance on a question that concerns them 
intimately. Is there another life or not? 
There must be no dallying, no equivocating. 
Something quick and decisive is asked for; 
something quick and decisive must be given. 
Proof — positive, immediate, unequivocal 
proof. 



12 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

That was the cry of this section of the 
distressed, a section in the main composed 
of the upper and middle classes; those who 
are known as the quite common people 
shouldered their burdens more stoically. 
The toiling poor are accustomed to dallying 
— waiting and hoping form part of their 
daily curriculum. However, the cry found 
response. Just as the wailing of the infant 
or the neighing of the horse on the steppes 
so often summons wolves, and the lowing of 
the oxen in the jungle apparently calls into 
being jackals and tigers, so the frantic 
demands of these unhappy parents and 
widows conjured up those styling them- 
selves mediums — spiritualists who, for fees 
(in most cases considerable ones), declared 
their ability to provide instantaneous and 
definite proofs of another life, by evoking 
and conversing with the spirits of the 
dead. 

Their offers were hungrily accepted. 
Crowds flocked to their doors, and all the 
more readily and eagerly, since their 
methods were obviously in accordance with 
the views of such men as Sir Oliver Lodge, 
Sir W. F. Barrett and Sir Arthur Conan 
Doyle, who through their writing chiefly, 



WHAT IS IT? 13 

had given the cause of Spiritualism, as a 
whole, an immense impetus. 

Soon, going to a medium, like consulting 
the oracles of old, became a fashion; it 
afforded novelty and excitement, and ap- 
pealed especially to the upper and middle 
classes, because it was too costly a form of 
entertainment ever to be shared by their 
poorer brethren. Those who had not lost 
relatives in the war, as well as the be- 
reaved, became bitten with the craze for 
Spiritualism; the papers took it up; the 
magazines encouraged it; and now, bidding 
fair to rival some of the periodical 
madnesses of old, it has swept, with an 
epidemic-like force throughout the length 
and breadth of Great Britain. 

Yet it has apparently given satisfaction 
only to the few; the masses are still hope- 
lessly in the cold, still hopelessly uncon- 
vinced, still hopelessly inquiring. 

Spiritualism! What does it all mean? 
Can it do us any real good? Has it 
actually come to stay? 

Now, it is not very easy to affix any 
specific creed to Spirituahsm, since it 
throws open its doors to people of varying 
and divergent ideas and beliefs, and has no 



14 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

very distinct dogmas of its own. How- 
ever, it professes absolute confidence in the 
ability of living man to bring, at will, the 
spirit world within the close range of his 
senses, and to get into actual and immediate 
contact with it ; and it i& on this belief alone 
that the whole fabric of Spiritualism 
appears to be based. To substantiate this 
statement I need only quote at random from 
the definitions of Spiritualism by avowed 
disciples of the creed. 

Dr J. M. Peebles in his work '' What is 
Spiritualism," pubhshed 1903, says (p. 6), 
'' Spiritualism is the philosophy of life and 
the direct antithesis of materialisation. 
Spiritualism does not create truth, but it is 
a living witness to the truth of a future 
existence. It reveals it; it demonstrates, 
describing its inhabitants, their occupa- 
tions, etc." 

Whilst Leoii Denis in his book " Christi- 
anity and Spiritualism, ' ' translated from the 
French by Helen Draper Speakman (pub- 
lished by Eider & Sons), says on page 28 : 
" We shall thus arrive at the conclusion 
that His (referring to Christ's) doctrine and 
that of the spirits are identical, that Spirit- 
ualism is simply the return to primitive 



WHAT IS IT? 15 

Christianity under more definite form, and 
we shall do so with an imposing train of 
experimental proofs which will render im- 
possible the renewed misrepresentation of 
the ideas of Christ/' 

These "experimental proofs" can, I 
venture to think, only refer to experiments 
with spirits, presumably those of the dead, 
and since reference to this same source of 
conviction will be found in most, if not, 
indeed, all the definitions of Spiritualism 
by Spiritualists, I can only again emphasise 
my statement that the real basis of Spirit- 
uahsm, the stone on which the whole struc- 
ture pivots, is a positive confidence in the 
ability of man, living, breathing man — 
man on and belonging to this material plane, 
to conjure up the denizens of the spiritual 
world, to see, to touch, to converse with 
them at will, and to keep them actively 
employed at his beck and call, preparing 
all kinds of phenomena for the gratification 
of his own peculiar whims and pleasures. 
Once prove this belief to be based on a no 
more substantial foundation than inflated 
fancy, hallucinations, delusions, gross ex- 
aggeration and barefaced trickery, and the 
whole edifice of Spiritualism would at once 



16 MENACE OF SPIEITUALISM 

break in pieces and crumble away into mere 
nothingness. So far, however, in spite of the 
countless and more than partially success- 
ful efforts that are continually being made 
to obtain this proof, something every now 
and then crops up to which scepticism and 
materialism can offer no very convincing ex- 
planation ; and this something has invariably 
succeeded in not merely keeping Spiritual- 
ism from being snuffed out altogether, but 
occasionally — as is happening at the present 
moment — in imparting to it a life and a 
lustre that arouses grave apprehensions in 
the minds of the more thoughtful and 
rational of us, and that would arouse even 
graver ones, did we not, deriving our in- 
spirations from similar happenings in the 
past, beHeve such an outburst to be merely 
spasmodic. 

But more of this anon. To revert to the 
definition of Spiritualism. I have endea- 
voured to show that Spiritualism as a 
creed — if one may so designate it — relies 
mainly on one distinguishing principle, and 
that, apart from this single outstanding 
feature, it derives its colouring, chiefly, 
from the country in which it happens to be 
located. In India, for example, its teach- 



WHAT IS IT? 17 

ings are a reflection of Theosophy and con- 
fused Paganism; whilst in England and 
America the tenets it advances largely take 
their colour from a contorted and perverted 
rendering of the Old and New Testaments. 
It is this infusion of so many diverse views 
and creduHties into SpirituaHsm that has led 
some people to attribute to it a much larger 
individual doctrine and literature than that 
to which it is really entitled; and to regard 
it as having two distinct branches, namely 
the doctrinal and the phenomena, though 
the two are, in reality, so closely related to 
one another that any absolute separation is 
impossible. However, for the purpose of 
criticism, I think it is weU to deal with these 
two so-called branches separately. 

In the space allotted me I can do little 
more than merely allude to Spiritualism in 
its relation to Theosophy and other oriental 
schools of religious philosophy. I beheve 
there is nothing in the teachings of Theo- 
sophy, which is about as heterogeneous a 
jumble of tenets and ideas as it is possible 
to conceive, i.e., a jumble of gnosticism, 
taken from three distinct schools, Neopla- 
tonism, Hermeticism, Eosicrucianism, 
Brahmanism, Zoroastrianism, Roman, 

B 



18 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

Greek and Egyptian mythology, and 
countless other mythologies — to contra- 
dict the main principle of Spiritualism; on 
the contrary, as the majority of those pro- 
fessing Theosophy most certainly counten- 
ance, in a more or less restricted sense, and, 
under somewhat elastic conditions, practise 
Spiritualism, one may reasonably conclude 
that it is not only reconcilable with Theo- 
sophy, but that it may even be said to come 
within its tenets and, possibly, to have been 
in the beginning merely an offshoot from 
it. At the same time I believe I am right 
in saying that there is a certain phase of 
Spiritualism to which a large number of 
Theosophists object, a phase which is 
termed Spiritism, and which signifies the 
resorting to the Spiritual-phenomena side of 
Spiritualism for merely idle and speculative 
purposes. 

Before passing on to the main subject of 
my criticism — Spiritualism in England — I 
should like to remark that it was rather un- 
fortunate for the cause of Spiritualism and 
Theosophy alike, that one of the founders 
of the Modern School of Theosophy in the 
East, Helen Petrovna Blavatsky, better 
known as H.P.B., after laying claim to such 



WHAT IS IT? 19 

an extraordinary development of the so- 
called psychic faculty that she was brought 
into touch and, one might say, was on terms 
of actual intimacy with entities on the very 
highest spiritual planes (she is still regarded 
by the theosophical sages as an initiated 
disciple of the Mahatma, known as Morya, 
and included by them in the same category 
as Plato, Pythagoras, and other great moral 
expounders of the past), should eventually 
have been detected in an act or acts of 
common or garden fraud whilst producing 
some of her alleged spiritual phenomena. 
Had H.P.B. been a person of less exalted 
position her misdeeds might not have given 
rise to quite so much criticism; but being 
almost akin to a Mahatma her exposure not 
unnaturally led cynics to suggest that a cult 
founded by a person whose practices were 
far from being of a godlike nature, could 
be neither very sound nor very desirable. 
Besides, these cynics argued, the psychic 
properties to which the majority of her 
followers laid claim, since they obviously 
did not enable their owners to see beneath 
the surface, were of little practical use 
to them; and spirit guides, if they cannot 
warn us of danger and put us on our guard 



20 MENACE OF SPIEITUALISM 

against people likely to abuse our con- 
fidence, cannot be reckoned of any great 
worth or value. 

Furthermore, the exposure of H.P.B. 
led outsiders to wonder whether the same 
influences, spiritual or otherwise, to which 
she was subject, might not, also, be inspir- 
ing some of her adherents ; whether, indeed, 
in the ranks of the more prominent and arro- 
gant members of the cults of Theosophy and 
Spiritualism — for both came under her wing 
— there might not be others equally daring, 
equally plausible and equally unscrupulous, 
who, taking advantage of the more ignorant, 
trustful and gullible members of the frater- 
nities, were laughing up their sleeves and, 
at the same time, fattening. As, however, 
I am reserving my comments on Spirit- 
uaHsm in India for another occasion, I 
will pass on now to the doctrinal branch 
of Spiritualism in England. 



CHAPTER II 

HOW SPIRITUALISM TRIES TO DISTORT THE 
OLD TESTAMENT 

The centre of Spiritualism, as is the case 
with the centres of most creeds and cults 
in this country, is in London, and the bulk 
of the Spiritualists in London profess an 
adulterated type of Christianity. 

" Spiritualists, Hke the Primitive 
Chuixhes," says Dr J. M. Peebles, 
*' believe in God the Father,"^ and he goes 
on to say: "Spiritualism is of God," 
adding that " the corner stone, the founda- 
tion pillar of Spiritualism, is spirit, and 
God is Spirit."^ He seems to forget, how- 
ever, that there are various kinds of spirits, 
that all are not of necessity good, and that 
the spirit that has inspired Spiritualism may 

' " What Is Spiritualism ? " (p. 9). By J. M, Peebles, 
M.D., M.A. Published by Peebles Institute. Printed 
1903. ' Same Work, p. lo-ii. 

21 



22 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

belong to a very different category to that 
which constitutes God. 

Indeed, if one might form an opinion as 
to what constitutes the corner stone of 
SpirituaHsm, from the type of SpirituaHst 
one meets at seances, one might affirm that 
if spirit at all, that spirit is astonishingly 
worldly, to a large extent commercial, 
distinctly grotesque and bizarre, and 
consequently not at all in accordance with 
anything the more thoughtful of us outside 
the ranks of Spiritualism would ascribe to 
the highest Spiritual Plane, least of all to 
a being of such infinite wisdom and virtue 
as God. However, to continue, one need 
not be surprised, perhaps, that the pro- 
pounders of Spiritualism — since it owes, in 
no small measure, its existence to an atmos- 
phere of mysticism the ages have built 
round it — ^should profess to see in the 
Scriptures mysteries and occult evidences 
far too profound to catch the eye of the 
more vulgar and less initiated materiahst. 

Mr John Page Hopps, in a pamphlet 
entitled ' ' Spiritualism in the Old Testa- 
ment," goes so far as to describe the whole 
of the Old Testament as " a sealed book," 
full of spirit appearances, spirit lights. 



DISTORTS THE OLD TESTAMENT 23 

spirit sounds, trance speaking and symbol- 
ism, at the same time he assures us that 
all such happenings are perfectly famihar 
to the modern SpirituaHst. This same 
writer, Hke most Spirituahsts, pitches upon 
the book of Ezekiel as being specially 
psychic, and subjects not only the prophet, 
but the Holy Spirit to whom the prophet 
attributes his powers, to a severe criti- 
cism. We are told, for example, that 
although Ezekiel was a medium, possessing 
the faculties both of clairvoyance and 
clairaudience, he was open to all kinds of 
spirit influences, good, bad and indifferent, 
and that it is simply foolish to consider all 
his inspirations as emanating from God. 
Mr Hopps even suggests that it is very 
doubtful, according to the true (i.e., the 
psychic) interpretation of Ezekiel, if the 
Jehovah, who is alluded to as " the Lord," 
was, in reality, God Almighty; in fact he 
infers that the Jehovah of the Jews was 
merely a finite spirit — or band of spirits — 
of very varying power, who had taken the 
Hebrew race under his or their guardian- 
ship and found them very much of a hand- 
ful. In this latter respect, perhaps, some 
of us will agree with him. 



24 MENACE OF SPIEITUALISM 

Mr Hopps, like most so-called author- 
ities on Spiritualism and Psychism, is 
arrogant, and, as I shall endeavour to 
show later, highly fanciful and imagina- 
tive. That Ezekiel possessed very peculiar 
spiritual powers is, of course, clearly 
apparent; had he not possessed them he 
would not have been able to prophesy and 
predict; but it is equally apparent that he 
was no medium in the ordinary sense of 
the word, since, judging from the glimpses 
we get of his character and mentality in 
the Scriptures, he must have been a man 
of no mean intellectual and statesmanlike 
quahties, and, consequently, the very anti- 
thesis of the present-day medium, who is, 
as a rule, not only unintellectual and ill- 
informed, but occasionally both sensuous 
and sordid. Moreover, Ezekiel's visions, 
inasmuch as they possessed unquestion- 
able significance for his contemporaries — 
especially for his countrymen to whom, 
in all probabiHty, they were by no means 
wholly enigmatical, might be said to have 
been of great national importance and 
interest. Can anyone say the same of the 
visions and messages purporting to come 
through Spiritualistic mediums to-day? Far 



BISTORTS THE OLD TESTAMENT 25 

from being either grand, or ennobling, 
or even instructive, these messages are, 
without exception, trifling, unedifying, and 
footling/ and if, as Mr Hopps suggests, 
not all of Ezekiel's visions emanated from 
the highest spiritual plane, though in this I 
disagree with him, it is perfectly certain 
that very few of the visions of a modern 
medium emanate from any plane save the 
lowest. But to proceed, no matter whether 
he possesses the psychic faculty or not, the 
ordinary Spiritualist invariably exhibits a 
tendency to imagine and invent. Mr Hopps, 
for instance, after again trying to convince 
us that Ezekiel held regular seances after 
the nature of those held by Spiritualists to- 
day, tries to estabhsh his case by assert- 
ing that the phrase, "I sat in mine house 
and the elders of Judah sat before me '*' 
(Ezekiel viii. 1), refers to an ordinary 
Spiritualistic seance, something in the 
nature of modern table-turning or 
trance mediumship; and he subsequently 
states that the whole book of Ezekiel 
consists of a collection of records of similar 



* No better instance of this can be afforded than the 
so-called spirit communications recorded in Sir Oliver 
Lodge's *' Raymond " (published by Methuen & Co., 1916) . 



26 MENACE OF SPIEITUALISM 

sittings. He forgets, however, to add 
that whereas Ezekiel was never, as far as 
these verses show, convicted of falsehood 
and barefaced trickery, the majority of 
present-day mediums have been proved 
guilty of both; so that between Ezekiel and 
those whom Mr Hopps designates his suc- 
cessors, there is, after all, a very remark- 
able difference, a difference upon which 
I will expatiate later on. 

As one would suppose, Ezekiel is by 
no means the only prophet or patriarch 
whose dignity is assailed by Spiritualists. 
Isaiah is similarly Ukened to a modern clair- 
voyant, while the phrase " and it shall 
come to pass, as soon as I am gone from 
thee, that the Spirit of the Lord shall 
carry thee whither I know not " (1 Kings 
xviii. 12), is by some miraculous system of 
distortion, worthy of the most ingenious 
species of rack ever invented, made to 
suggest levitation, i.e., that Elijah was to 
be lifted off the ground after the manner of 
a table at a twentieth-century Spiritualistic 
seance. Now I have seen many tables 
sHghtly raised from the floor at seances, 
and it has always appeared to me— as well 
as to others present — that such levitation 



DISTORTS THE OLD TESTAMENT 27 

was not altogether incompatible with very 
materialistic trickery, which might very 
well have been performed by one of the 
sitters without any spirit intervention what- 
soever. Indeed, I feel quite certain that 
there is nothing in this kind of levitation 
that could not be easily enacted by a con- 
juror, not necessarily as skilful as Messrs 
Maskelyne and Devant. 

I have, however, never yet seen, at any 
seance or elsewhere, a case of complete 
spiriting away, such as Obadiah prophesied 
would happen to Elijah, and which 
eventually did happen. (2 Kings ii. 11.) 
Perhaps some of our Spiritualistic friends 
will affirm such feats have actually come 
within their experience, and will be 
able to name the mediums who have 
accomplished them. Indeed, they should be 
able to do so, since they declare Elijah was 
simply a highly developed psychic, like the 
Fox Sisters, H.P.B., or Eusapia Palladino 
(whose exits from this material plane were 
not, I believe, accomplished in celestial 
chariots, an omission on the part of Jehovah 
for which believers in these notorious 
mediums will no doubt be able to proffer 
some kind of apology or explanation). 



28 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

Spiritualism, of course, claims Abraham, 
also, as one of its disciples, and his 
converse with angels is reckoned in the 
same category as the " spirit materiahsa- 
tions " which are taking place to-day. 

' ' Patriarchs, prophets and seers in 
Abraham's ^ and Isaiah's time conversed 
with spirits and angels according to the 
Scriptures," Dr Peebles writes,^ " and 
why should not we? Neither God nor His 
laws have changed." Very possibly not, 
Dr Peebles, but man apparently has, for 
seldom do we see nowadays in any class 
or profession the dignity and grandeur of 
character that we find in Moses, Samuel, 
Isaiah and other of the Hebrew leaders and 
prophets, and we do not hesitate to say that 
great indeed would be our disappointment 
were we to hope to find men possessing 
these characteristics in the ranks of modern 
mediumship. 

Another point to bear in mind, when 
confronted with these impious compari- 
sons, is that the Divine visitations and 
manifestations in the Old Testament were 
never resorted to, saving on very particular 

»" What is Spiritualism ? " (pp. 5-6). J, M. Peebles, 
M.D., M.A. 



DISTOETS THE OLD TESTAMENT 29 

and momentous occasions, and for some 
very specific and rational purpose, as, for 
example, when God spoke to the child 
Samuel to warn him of the impending fate 
of Eh's house, and to Moses, from the 
burning bush, to command him to deliver 
the children of Israel out of the hands of 
the Egyptians. It is obviously quite other- 
wise with regard to modern mediumship, 
which is resorted to on every possible 
occasion, and often on the most trivial and 
ridiculous pretext. Hence, perhaps, it is 
small wonder that the revelations made 
by "spirit guides" or ''controls'' are 
invariably silly, and occasionally obscene 
and even blasphemous; and small wonder, 
too, that these spirits, far from telling us 
anything new, or instructive, or elevating, 
merely convey the impression that the 
spirit World from which they hail must be 
a strange mixture of a public elementary 
schoolroom, a pot-house bar and a lunatic 
asylum, and that we should be well advised 
to cling to this material life for as long a 
time as possible. 

Spiritualists will of course assert that what 
I have just alluded to is Spiritism, and not 
SpirituaHsm, that Spiritism naturally puts 



30 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

one in touch with the denizen's of the lowest 
spirit planes, but that Spirituahsm enables 
its followers to see visions and witness 
manifestations of the same nature as were 
seen and witnessed by Moses, Isaiah, and 
other Biblical characters of the same degree 
of piety. My reply to this is that it is 
really a distinction with very little differ- 
ence, that the seance of the Spiritualist 
generally owes its origin to much the same 
motives as the seance of the Spiritist, and 
that, at all events, there is nothing in the 
characters of even the best of the Spiritual- 
ists and Spiritists, any more than there is 
in the characters of any of us mere laymen 
and outsiders — to warrant visitations and 
— if one likes to call them so — phenomena 
— from such celestial sources as those 
specified in Holy Writ. As I have already 
stated, Abrahams and Isaiahs no longer 
exist, and, in comparison, the best of us 
to-day are very ordinary, very mediocre. 

Another point that appeals to me in the 
argument that the phenomena claimed by 
Spiritualists as emanating from the same 
spirit sources as those mentioned in the 
Bible, cannot be genuine, is that those who 
witness the phenomena do not experience 



DISTORTS THE OLD TESTAMENT 31 

even the slightest sensation of fear. Now 
most of us, I think, believe in spirits that 
appear spontaneously, that is to say, with- 
out the connivance of a medium or the 
assistance of a trumpet or table (indeed, 
the evidence relating to such phenomena is 
so accumulative and corroborative that few 
would attempt to question it), and those of 
us who have had any actual experience with 
these spontaneous apparitions, popularly 
designated ghosts, know only too well the 
awe and terror they inspire in humans and 
animals alike. 

It was the same in Bibhcal days. When 
confronted with the angel of the Lord 
Balaam's ass falls down, whilst its rider 
bows his head to shut the vision out 
(Numbers xxii. 27-31); and Moses, when 
the Lord calls to him from the burning 
bush, hides his face, for he is afraid to look 
upon God (Exodus iii. 6). How different is 
this behaviour from that of the> mediums of 
to-day, who are acclaimed by Spiritualists 
as the successors of Moses, Balaam, and 
other prophets of the Scriptures. These 
Spiritualistic mediums profess to see spirit 
after spirit with the utmost sang-froid. 
They have only to receive a fee, or the 



32 MENACE OF SPIEITUALISM 

promise of one, and spirits of all sorts come 
with the regularity of an automaton, whilst 
they — the mediums — do not even turn a 
hair. Besides, I have never heard of a dog 
that has been present on any such occasion 
— and those of us who have tested dogs in 
haunted houses know how susceptible they 
are to fear — being in the least degree 
terrified. 

Can it be that these mediums and Spirit- 
ualists are hoher than Moses? If they are 
not, how else can they account for their 
total unconcern, and for the complete 
absence of either awe, fear, or astonish- 
ment at any of their exhibitions. 

Just to show to what an extent this 
craze for the so-called psychic faculty has 
" caught on,'' I cannot refrain from refer- 
ring to a Httle book sent me the other day, 
entitled " The Ministry of Angels."' We 
are prepared for something wonderful from 
the following passage in the preface : 

* ' It (the book) has been written because 
angels have told her (the authoress) that 
rare psychic powers have been bestowed on 
her, and she has been permitted to see 

» By Mrs Joy Snell (published 1919, by G. Bell & Sons, 
Ltd). 



DISTOETS THE OLD TESTAMENT 33 

what is hidden from the vast majority of 
mankind until after death/' 

But forewarned as we are, we are certainly 
not ready for what follows. It shocks us 
immeasurably. 

The authoress states that when a child 
she awoke one night to find the room 
flooded with sunlight, and she goes on to 
describe two figures that suddenly appeared 
to her (pp. 11-12) : 

'' One was that of a man," she says, 
" the other that of a woman. They were 
clad in shining, white robes. Around the 
head of each was a bright halo. The man 
stretched forth his hand and said : ' Be 
not dismayed; blessed shalt thou be.' 
Then the woman spoke and said : ' Behold 
the Saviour! And I am His mother.' " 

The authoress does not seem to have been 
seized with any of that fear that came upon 
the prophets of old, when in the presence of 
God or His angels, or that the disciples felt 
at the Transfiguration (St Matthew xvii. 6), 
or when our Lord appeared to them after 
the Crucifixion (St Luke xxiv. 37), but to 
have taken the most glorious and awe- 
inspiring of all possible visions simply as a 
prognostication of her own death. It never 

c 



34 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

seems to have occurred to her — as it most 
certainly would have occurred to most 
people — how very extraordinary it was 
that she should have been singled out from 
among all other earthly beings for such a 
visitation — a visitation of a nature that — 
as far as one knows — has certainly never 
taken place since the days of our Lord. 

Does the authoress imagine she possesses 
a character and qualities not only far — 
but immeasurably far superior to those of 
any of the countless human beings that have 
existed since the time of the Crucifixion, or 
does she attribute the phenomena to a 
development of psychic propensities which 
can certainly have no parallel? 

The more rational and reflective among 
us will, I think, incline to the belief that 
such a visitation was actually subjective, 
and hallucinatory, and prompted by nothing 
more than colossal self-estimation, an 
opinion which is more than justified by a 
further perusal — if patience permits — of the 
work. At any rate such testimony, since 
it is in no way corroborated, furnishes no 
proof whatever either of so-called spirit 
mediumship or of a psychic faculty, but 
merely serves to illustrate, as I have said 



DISTORTS THE OLD TESTAMENT 35 

before, to what a pitch of abandonment and 
lack of self-restraint this mad craze for 
Spiritualism, and the notoriety it sometimes 
brings with it, has been carried. 

In accordance with this mad craze every 
reference to God and His angels appearing 
to, or communicating with man, to be met 
with in the Old Testament, is converted by 
Spiritualists into signifying the Almighty's 
approval and sanctioning of mediumship. 
In their attempt to force the Scriptures into 
reconciliation with the practices of their 
cult, they wilfully blind themselves and 
those they seek to pervert, to this point — 
that it was one thing for God and His angels 
to demonstrate themselves spontaneously to 
man, and quite another thing for man to 
attempt, after the fashion of the modern 
medium, to call up spirits, indiscriminately, 
from the tomb, and elsewhere. There is 
certainly nothing whatever in anything God 
and His angels either said or did to warrant 
the assumption that they would sanction 
such proceedings. On the contrary, al- 
though there is an abundance of evidence 
in the Old Testament to show that God 
and the men He selected as His prophets 
and confidants fully recognised the fact that 



36 MENACE OF SPIEITUALISM 

there were people (necromancers, sor- 
cerers, witches, etc.) who knew, and were 
capable of putting into practice, the art of 
caUing up genuine spirits, good and bad, 
and people who were able to perform all 
kinds of phenomena, sometimes through 
bond fide spirit agency, as, for example, 
Pharaoh's sorcerers. Exodus vh. 11-12, 
and sometimes through merely clever 
jugglery, it was against these people 
and their practices that God and His 
chosen representatives most sternly and 
uncompromisingly set their faces. If there 
is any doubt at all as to this, one has only 
to refer to the following : — Leviticus 
XX. 6, Leviticus xix. 31, Deuteronomy xviii. 
10-12, 1 Samuel xxviii. 3 and 9, 2 Kings 
xxi. 6, Isaiah viii. 19, Exodus xxii. 18. 

The mediumship of to-day, call it Spirit- 
ualism, Spiritism or what you will, is simply 
an attempt — albeit a feeble and in most 
cases abortive one — at imitation of the 
necromancy, sorcery, and spirit trafficking 
alluded to in the above texts, the so-called 
guides and controls — Joey Kings, Fedoras 
and other spirit entities — bearing a remark- 
able resemblance to what were once known 
as witches' famihars. 



DISTORTS THE OLD TESTAMENT 37' 

Then — in those far-off Bibhcal times, 
when Chaldean and Egyptian magic had, 
without doubt, been developed to a very 
great degree, and man was in far closer 
touch with the primary elements in Nature 
than he finds it possible to be to-day, the 
necromancers, witches and the like were 
in all probability really able to conjure up 
spirits with comparative ease. But when 
these races gradually disappeared, their art 
seems — to a very large extent at least — 
to have perished with them. Other nations, 
the Greeks and Romans, for instance, and, 
later still, the Moors and Arabs all made 
desperate attempts to get into touch with 
the dead, and in their day, too, apparently 
worked all sorts of phenomena and miracles ; 
but it is very doubtful if success very 
often came to them, and it is more than 
likely that most of the wonders that were 
alleged to take place were manipulated 
through the assistance of an advanced 
knowledge of alchemy and jugglery, in 
which the Eastern nations, especially, 
in all times seem to have been past masters. 
The same sort of thing, the wild craving to 
pry into every forbidden mystery, the mad 
desire for power and notoriety, to be some- 



38 MENACE OF SPIEITUALISM 

thing quite distinct and different from 
anybody else, and the more sordid yet ever 
increasing love of riches, came steadily 
down through the centuries, contaminating 
other races and nations, and inducing them, 
too, to try and force open the door connect- 
ing this and the other world or worlds. 
Italy, Austria, France, England, all in their 
turn, became infected — all witnessed the 
same grim and secret nocturnal meetings 
in closed chambers, the same frantic 
endeavours to obtain satanic and other 
spirit aid by mystic symbolism, spells and 
incantation, the same practice of resorting 
at midnight to cross roads and other 
desolate places for the alleged purpose of 
holding witches' Sabbaths. 

Our records of those times, however, 
suggest very strongly that if the super- 
natural did occasionally respond to the 
incessant clamourings for it, most of 
the manifestations were simply due to 
charlatanism and trickery. And so it is 
to-day. The methods that were employed 
by the Babylonian and Assyrian necro- 
mancers in the days of Moses and other of 
those old-world prophets still remain in 
obscurity. Every now and then, perhaps. 



DISTOETS THE OLD TESTAMENT 39 

something rather inexplicable does occur at 
a seance, which makes one for a moment 
wonder if another key to fit the lock has 
at last been discovered, and intercourse 
with the spirit world, as practised by the 
ancients, has at length been obtained; but 
apprehensions on this score speedily vanish, 
for that something does not respond again, 
and one is assured that the occurrence was 
purely incidental and as unlooked-for on the 
part of the medium, as on the part of any- 
one else present. But that does not alter 
the fact that by the Almighty, the God of 
the Bible, which we in this country, at 
any rate, have been taught to honour and 
respect, any attempt at trafficking with 
denizens of the spirit world, good or bad 
(for the former see 1 Samuel xxviii. 15, 
2 Samuel xii. 23, 1 Chronicles x. 13), no 
mattel' whether the attempt is successful 
or not, is denounced and forbidden. 
There must be no compromising, no 
equivocating with God, and if only, in- 
asmuch as Spiritualism, citing Scripture 
for its own purpose, would seek to win 
converts by giving them a fallacious and 
entirely wrong interpretation of the Jehovah 
of the Jews' views on these matters, it is 



u 



40 MENACE OF SPIEITUALISM 

baneful and dangerous, and instead of being 
encouraged, as the more thoughtless and 
ignorant among us are incHned to do, it 
should be ruthlessly exposed and banned. 



CHAPTER III 

SPIRITUALISM AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 

When we go on to consider the Spiritualists' 
views with regard to the New Testament, 
we find just the same barefaced attempts 
at contortion and perversion. The 
Christian beHef that Jesus Christ was, and 
is God Incarnate is almost universally 
denied. Borrowing their terminology from 
Theosophy, many of the SpirituaHsts, even 
in this country, allude to our Lord as a 
great master, and by the majority, if not 
indeed by all of them. He is regarded as 
no more saintly, no more celestial than a 
medium, a few degrees, perhaps, more 
psychic and spirit-inspired than any present- 
day medium, but still one of precisely the 
same stock, and more or less — if not, 
indeed, quite — in the same category. 

Dr J. M. Peebles, for instance, in refer- 
ring to our Lord, says : 
41 



42 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

" When that highly inspired man of 
Nazareth preached His radical doctrines in 
Palestine and performed His astonishing 
mediumistic works, etc." {vide '' What is 
Spirituahsm/' pp. 5-6), 

and again, 

" Spirituahsts, if intelligent, don't deny 
the existence of God — nor of Jesus of 
Nazareth, the mediumistic man '' (same 
work, p. 10); 

whilst Leon Denis again in "' Christianity 
and Spiritualism " says : 

" Jesus came, a powerful spirit and 
Divine missionary, an inspired medium '' 
(p. 22). 

And these views will be found to tally with 
those of practically all Spiritualists who cite 
the New Testament in their cause. 

Christ, Whose spotless life and gentle 
and humane disposition made Him not 
merely stand out as quite distinct from any 
of the men and women of His time, but 
as equally distinct from any of His pre- 
decessors or successors, is fetched from, off 
the pedestal, on which the love and more 
than justifiable adoration of centuries has 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 43 

placed Him, and dragged through the 
mire. One cannot, indeed, speak strongly 
enough on the subject. One can only say 
this, that any attempt to classify one of 
such infinite and unparalleled grace, mental 
beauty, and moral perfections as our 
Blessed Lord, with those ^Yho, more often 
than not, prove to be of sordid nature, 
inferior intellect, and highly questionable 
morals, namely mediums, is both blas- 
phemous in the extreme and absurd, and 
one can only conclude that those who are 
capable of such a classification are either 
hopeless lunatics (more dangerous than 
many of those imprisoned in asylums), or 
else that they owe their inspirations to the 
most malignant and mischievous type of 
spirit, the only type which, in my opinion, 
is likely to respond to the beck and call of 
human beings. 

After such profanity one is not surprised 
at anything a Spiritualist asserts. There- 
fore the following quotation {vide p. 27 of 
' •' Christianity, Churchianity or Spiritual- 
ism," by J. M. Peebles, M.D.) ''true 
Spiritualism and true Christianity are 
essentially one ' ' does not give us the shock 
it otherwise might have done. The mind 



44 MENACE OF SPIEITUALISM 

that is capable of such a grotesquely falla- 
cious representation of Jesus Christ as that 
presented by Dr Peebles is capable of 
any outrageous fallacy, and it is only in 
keeping with his unconquerable habit of 
perversion, that he should persuade himself 
and try to persuade others that the inimit- 
able creed of Christianity is merely another 
name for his own unwholesome, illogical 
and ephemeral cult of Spirituahsm. 

Christ's teaching, as gleaned from the 
mere text of the New Testament, strikes 
most readers as the essence of directness 
and simplicity, quite in harmony with His 
character; but Spiritualism, the true Spiri- 
tuahsm Dr Peebles and others boast about, 
invests everything Christ said or did with 
an air of profound mystery and subtle 
meaning. The parables that perfectly well 
explain themselves to readers of any age 
and with any intelligence at all, are declared 
to be only interpretable to psychics and 
initiates in the innermost mysteries of 
Higher Thought, and the texts usually 
quoted in support of these assertions, 
namely St Matthew xiii. 10-11 and St 
Mark iv. 11-12, are also fondly believed 
to prove conclusively that Christ in select- 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 45 

ing the Apostles, chose them solely for their 
alleged mediumistic powers. Spiritualists 
cannot, or will not, realise that this act of 
selection marked a most unique and momen- 
tous occasion, and that the Apostles, after 
the call, owed their increased wisdom and 
power to perform miracles, not to any such 
sordid, unequivocally denounced agency as 
necromancy, or, to use the modern term, 
mediumship, but wholly to Divine — as 
utterly distinct from ordinary spirit — influ- 
ence. Christ obviously chose His Apostles 
for their characters — they were the type 
of men most Hkely to make sound and 
capable preachers, and to carry on His 
mission of love and moral reformation; 
men possessing attributes of a nature very 
different from that characterising the so- 
called psychist and medium of to-day. But, 
if any further proof of this be needed, one 
has only to compare the miracles Christ and 
His disciples wrought with the trumpery 
phenomena produced by these mediums. 
Christ not only healed the bhnd, the halt, 
the maimed and those suffering from such 
incurable diseases as leprosy, but He 
brought back the dead to life, and made the 
tossing, roaring sea lie still and silent. 



46 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

Could any of the present-day professional 
mediums, with all their boasted super- 
normal and highly developed spiritual facul- 
ties, do the same? No, they could not. 
Far from doing what Christ and His Apostles 
did, for the good of mankind, mediums 
never, through their alleged spirit phen- 
omena and spirit influence, perform any- 
thing really useful, or beneficial, or 
even exceptionally wonderful. Far from 
restoring the bhnd, or raising the dead, 
they cannot even cure, on the spot, an 
ordinary cold in the head, make the hair 
grow again on the head of a middle-aged 
or long bald old person, or cause a 
fresh natural tooth to suddenly usurp the 
place of one that is badly decayed. They 
cannot even with a word or wave of their 
hand stop a bird in full flight in the air, or 
bring to a halt, by a mere glance, an earwig 
or a black beetle. To give them their due, 
however, they do not attempt to do the 
really marvellous — perhaps they are not 
quite sure of the capacities of their friends 
on the other side, who obviously have not 
much in common with St Peter nor St John 
— but content themselves with trying to 
make trumpets speak, tambourines dance, 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 47 

tables and chairs rise and walk, and flowers 
and sometimes fish — even eels — appear 
apparently from nowhere; occasionally 
varying their programme with materiahsa- 
tions, which " phenomena/' in reality, are 
very feeble, unconvincing and not at all 
alarming spirit impersonations, usually by 
'' controls " and other professed denizens 
from the spirit world. But whereas Christ 
and His Apostles were always successful 
in their undoubted miracles, " mediums " 
are not infrequently detected in the most 
puerile and vulgar acts of deception and 
trickery. 

There is really no similarity whatever 
between Christ and His Apostles and the 
modern medium and Spirituahst; indeed, 
the gulf of differences separating them is 
so wide that it could not be bridged. 

Christ's doctrine of repentance is tacitly 
accepted as a possible modifier in the chain 
of reincarnation (reincarnation being a 
theory in which the majority, at least, of 
SpirituaHsts, even those who profess what 
they term "true" Christianity, believe), 
but His equally essential teachings with 
regard to forgiveness are discountenanced 
and ignored. SpirituaHsts apparently are 



48 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

much divided as to what happens to the 
soul after death. Some, as may be gathered 
from certain passages in Sir Ohver Lodge's 
^' Kaymond/' beheve that man goes on in 
his immaterial state from very much the 
the same place as he left off in his physical 
body, that the spirit world is merely an 
ethereal counterpart of this, containing 
houses like ours, though made only of a 
sort of emanation from this earth, and 
places— presumably shops and public-houses 
— where clothes made from a species of 
decayed worsted, cigars composed of ethers, 
gases and essences, and, of course, 
whiskies-and-sodas (without the last-named, 
according to the great majority of mediums, 
no life, spiritual or otherwise, would seem 
to be complete) could be procured. Such 
a view of another life — so utterly contra- 
dictory to the teachings of Jesus Christ — 
appears to me very wild and extravagant, 
but, as a correspondent to the Sunday Times 
in the issue for 30th September, 1917, 
remarks, " we must not take Sir Oliver 
Lodge too seriously"; still it finds not a 
few supporters, and these may be found 
chiefly in the ranks of those Spirituahsts 
and Psychical Researchers, who, having 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 49 

an unreasoning respect for titles, blindly 
accept anything a man possessing one may 
happen to say, no matter how irrational and 
footling his remarks may appear to saner 
and less easily influenced people. Another 
view, and the one generally adopted by those 
SpirituaHsts in this country, who profess to 
be what they are pleased to term " true " 
Christians, is that the soul, on parting with 
the material body at physical dissolution, 
enters the lowest spiritual planes, i.e., 
those in closest contact to this world, where 
it remains for just as long as its passions 
and earthly cravings and tendencies remain 
with it. This view, to some extent at least, 
talhes with many Churchmen's opinions 
with regard to a Purgatory or intermediate 
state, and finds much support in Christ's 
actual teachings ; but, as might be expected 
by anyone who knows them, the Spiritualists 
who embrace it soon fly off to something 
wildly improbable, and uncorroborated, 
saving by their own mad, freakish fancies, 
and ignorant, if not wilful, BibHcal misre- 
presentations and distortions. The doctrine 
of a heaven is accepted under the tEeoso- 
phical camouflage of ' ' the highest spiritual 
planes," whilst that of a hell is wholly 

D 



50 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

discredited, the vilest and most earth-tied 
of spirits, though confined to the lowest 
spiritual planes, being believed to have the 
power to wander there ad libitum, indul- 
ging themselves to excess in all their old 
passions, and perfectly able, when the mood 
seizes them, or someone invokes them, to 
get into immediate touch with the material 
world, whose inhabitants they can tempt 
and annoy at will. ?> 

Those of us who belie ve in hauntings and 
in disturbances in houses and localities by 
spirits, which apparently come there spon- 
taneously, must accept the theory that there 
is a spirit world — perhaps more than one — 
very close to this world, but there is no 
actual proof that its denizens were ever of 
our flesh and blood, or anything to discoun- 
tenance the possibility, if not, indeed, 
probability, either that they be demons 
such as are referred to in more than one 
passage of the New Testament (St Matthew 
xii. 27, Acts xix. 13-14), or that they 
belong to one or other of the types of 
spirit recorded in Isaiah xiii. 21. But the 
doctrine — taught and practised by all 
Spirituahsts — to which Christians and, 
especially, Cathohcs, take the very greatest 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 51 

exception, is that of the invoked intercourse 
between the dead and the living. 

Taking advantage of the fact that many 
Christians and Churchmen beheve that we 
who are here on earth should pray for 
spirits in the intermediate state, i.e., those 
capable of rising to a higher sphere, and 
on the other hand that spirits who have 
passed over should pray for those left 
behind in the physical world. Spiritualists 
have construed such a momentous happen- 
ing as the Transfiguration and such passages 
as those contained in 1 Peter iii. 19, 1 Peter 
iv. 6, and Eevelations vi. 10, into signifying 
full license to mediums and others of their 
ilk, to get in touch with spirits of the dead 
whenever the mood (or prospect of money) 
seizes them. Now the Bible does not deny 
the possibility of the dead returning on 
rare occasions and for some very specific 
reason, but nothing save the wildest and 
most perverted stretch of the imagination 
could metamorphose the Transfiguration, 
or any of the texts I have mentioned, or 
any other passages in the Bible, into sig- 
nifying sanction for such intercourse with 
the dead as is alleged to be practised by 
the present-day medium. 



62 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

Mediums, however much they may pre- 
tend to the contrary, and be backed up 
in their pretensions by such would-be 
authorities on occult matters as Blavatsky 
and certain titled scientists who are posing 
as Psychical Researchers, know absolutely 
nothing as to what governs conditions on 
the other side. Samuel, when called up by 
the witch of Endor, sternly rebuked Saul 
for bringing him back, hence it is quite con- 
ceivable that the efforts made by mediums 
to forcibly communicate with the spirits of 
the dead, and through their agency to per- 
form all kinds of phenomena, may, even 
though unsuccessful (which, I believe, is 
almost invariably the case) entail a very 
considerable amount of suffering on those 
who are invoked. 

Surely this is a probability meriting our 
very gravest consideration. In any case 
the mere thought of those we love and 
respect being forced to respond to the call 
of mere strangers, people out to gratify 
their curiosity and fill their purses, is 
revolting in the extreme, and for this 
reason, chiefly, perhaps, the Catholic 
Church, and, indeed, all Christian 
Churches, as ^ell as all really humane 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 53 

and thoughtful people strongly condemn 
seances, both public and private ones alike. 

But there is another danger in connection 
with the practice of Spirituahsm, which I 
may as well deal with here, when special- 
ising on the religious and moral aspects of 
the question, and that is the effects of these 
attempts at spirit intercourse on the char- 
acters of the living people who partake in 
them. 

The unreliable and often mischievous 
nature of the messages obtained at sittings 
clearly demonstrates that such messages do 
not emanate either from intelligent or holy 
sources, and that if they come from bond 
fide spirits, these spirits can only be on a 
very low plane, and are therefore in no way 
calculated to improve either the mind or 
the morals. 

It is, I beheve, a fact that can be well 
substantiated, that the majority of mediums 
at all events — people who have been per- 
suaded to develop their so-called psychic 
faculties and devote the bulk of their time 
to going into trances (i.e., yielding 
up their minds to whatever controlhng 
spirit cares to come along), to automatic 
writing, crystal gazing, and table turniflg — 



54 MENACE OF SPIEITUALISM 

speedily degenerate, and in the end become 
absolutely demoralised and untrustworthy. 
That is a fact, I repeat, which I have 
reasons for believing can be thoroughly well 
confirmed, as can also the fact that many 
of the people who continually attend 
seances, develop manias which eventually 
spoil their hves and not infrequently lead 
to suicide. Can, I ask, such happenings 
be due to any agency that is beneficial or 
desirable, whether spirit or otherwise? It 
must be remembered that there were Spirit- 
uahsts in the days of the New Testament — 
a set of people quite distinct from the 
disciples and followers of Christ, with 
regard to whom both our Lord and His 
Apostles uttered many grave warnings (see 
St Matthew xii. 27, St Matthew xxiv. 24-26, 
Acts xix. 13-14, Galatians i. 8-9, Eevela- 
tions xxii. 18-19), and it is in these Spirit- 
ualists or necromancers, rather than in any 
of the miracle workers of the Old Testament, 
that the present-day mediums and their 
supporters find their counterparts. There 
is, indeed, a similarity between them that 
is most marked and clearly perceptible to 
any but the hopelessly stupid or wilfully 
blind. 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 55 

It will doubtless be protested again by 
certain Spiritualists, those who, claiming to 
have got beyond the stage of seeking for 
mere physical demonstrations, assert that 
they are quite distinct from Spiritists, as 
they somewhat superciliously designate 
them, that the visions they see and the 
messages they receive are of a very superior 
order, almost, indeed, if not quite, iden- 
tical with those seen and received by the 
Apostles. Certain of this fraternity have 
gone so far as to tell me that they have 
visited, whilst in trances, the most conse- 
crated and zealously exclusive parts of 
Heaven, and frequently conversed with 
saints and some of the very holiest of the 
great teachers and thinkers of the past — 
privileges, they assured me, that were 
strictly, confined to devotees of Spiritualism 
and initiates in all its innermost mysteries. 
In order to give an air of authority to 
these pretensions they resort again to 
the Scriptures, this time to the New Testa- 
ment, and pointing to St Peter, St John 
and other of the Apostles, assume that in 
them there are evidences of their own 
ability to come in touch with the Divine 
side of the spirit world. What the Apostles 



56 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

did, they argue, we can do ; their authority 
is ours; for they only possessed psy^^hic 
faculties similar to ours. They forget, 
however, as I have already endeavoured to 
explain, that the Apostles lived in a time of 
the greatest moment in the world's history; 
that they belonged to a race specially 
selected and watched over by God ; that the 
gifts bestowed on them were only apparent 
after their call — there is nothing to prove 
they had the so-called psychic faculty prior 
to this event — that though it is true they 
saw visions, and heard voices, and spoke in 
strange tongues, etc., it is also equally true 
they performed miracles of the greatest 
possible benefit to their fellow-creatures 
(which is certainly not the case with any of 
the present-day Spiritualists) ; and that they 
were all men — with the exception of Judas, 
who owed his downfall to a national weak- 
ness taken advantage of by the devil — of 
the most exceptional moral character, 
which, as I have pointed out before, cannot 
possibly be said of the modern Spiritualist; 
so that the latter, whether initiates of the 
very highest order or not, have really no 
warrant whatever for the spiritual privi- 
leges to which they lay claim, and conse- 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 57 

quently there is little reason, if any, for 
assigning them to a different and separate 
category from that of the ordinary 
Spiritist. 

For instances of the many disastrous 
effdcts Spiritualism — albeit the i higher 
branch of the cult — has on character, and 
to show to what an extent human egotism, 
vanity and self-importance are fostered by 
it, I cannot do better than refer tO' a work 
entitled ''Talks with the Dead.'' It is 
edited — and, from what the context sug- 
gests, presumably written — by John Lobb, 
F.E.G.S., F.E.Hist.S., and published by 
a firm called after his name. The book is 
well garnished with texts, as, per example, 
on the title page we find " And there 
appeared unto them Elias with Moses ; and 
they were talking with Jesus " (St Mark ix. 
4), and on the page opposite the title page, 
under a photograph purporting to be that 
of " one of the editor's band of spirit 
ministers " we get, " Are they not all 
ministering spirits sent forth to minister? " 
(Hebrews i. 14), and everywhere one is 
met with attempts to compare the medium- 
ship of to-day with the Divine inspiration 
and highest spiritual agency of Old and New 



68 MENACE OF SPIEITUALISM 

Testament days. See, for example, page 
86, where we read these remarkable Hnes : 
" The second chapter (i.e. of Acts) contains 
an account of the first seance held by the 
disciples after Christ's Ascension"; need- 
less to say, one looks for it in vain ; page 85, 
where we find that the angel that appeared 
unto Moses in a flame of fire (Exodus iii. 2), 
and the granting to Abraham of a sign from 
God in the form of a smoking furnace, are 
hkened to the trumpery performances of 
the so-called spirit control " John King," 
and scattered throughout the book other 
equally nonsensical and profane compari- 
sons, too numerous to mention. Text after 
text, too, is mutilated and contorted to suit 
the editor or author's purpose, but one 
would have credited him with rather more 
caution and astuteness than to give away 
his cause so abruptly and completely as he 
does on page 88, where, after quoting 
Daniel v. 5 (which narrates the incident of 
the writing on the wall) he goes on to say : 

" Many sitters will attest that hands 
frequently take hold of theirs, pat their 
face, and allow them to hold them. Scores 
of times I have held the materiahsed hands 
of spirits. They have taken from the 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 59 

pockets of those present sweets and placed 
them in my mouth. ... A small musical 
box out of order has often by spirit hands 
been taken to pieces and set going, etc." 



Precisely, Mr Lobb; it is just those vulgar 
and fooHsh antics you speak about that 
place the phenomena contrived by the 
present-day medium on an entirely different 
footing from that of the miracles performed 
by God's select, either in the Old or New 
Testament; and which makes one positively 
certain that if due to spirit agency, at all, 
that agency can only emanate from the 
lowest possible planes. 

It is hardly necessary to add, perhaps, 
that, after little gambols of this kind, Mr 
Lobb and his friends should be visited by 
the spirits of all kinds of eminents. On 
page 133, for instance, he says : 

"At the close of my services in London 
and the Provinces clairvoyants present 
often remain to let me know the number 
and names of spirits present on the platform 
and in the building. They name them one 
after another — C. H. Spurgeon, Hugh Price 
Hughes, W. E. Gladstone, Geo. Muller, 
etc.": 



60 MENACE OF SPIEITUALISM 

whilst in other parts of the book references 
are made to the return of Mrs Catherine 
Booth, Sir Edwin Arnold, Charles Dickens, 
John Wesley, John Bunyan, John Dryden, 
and, of course, William Shakespeare (no 
Spiritualistic seance is complete without 
either Shakespeare or Dickens, who would 
appear to have many "egos" and to be 
capable of much division, for they are often 
alleged to be present in more circles than one 
at the same time). That there can be found 
people ready to believe that the spirits of 
such of our great departed as Shakespeare 
and Dickens should leave all the solemnities 
of the tomb to attend meetings and seances 
presided over by men of no greater mental 
capacity than John Lobb and other present- 
day Spirituahsts, is almost inconceivable. 
It can, in fact, only be accounted for 
by one or other of the following assump- 
tions : either that the people who swallow 
such absurdities are naturally weak-minded 
— were born so — ^or that constant attend- 
ance at such circles has brought about a 
mental degeneracy which is, very possibly, 
really due to spirit influence, the influence 
of that type of spirit most Hkely to respond 
to evocation on such occasions, namely, 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 61 

impersonating demons, or to use a Spiritual- 
istic expression " elementals." 

My reference to Mr Lobb and his work 
thus serves a dual purpose — it demonstrates 
the extent to which human vanity as well 
as human credulity can be carried, when 
influenced by Spiritualism ; and, sad to say, 
the air of extreme self-satisfaction and 
smugness so apparent in every page of the 
volume, is but characteristic of the gener- 
ality of all so-called exponents of the cult. 

To continue. I have referred to two of 
the theories entertained by Spiritualists 
with regard to the fate of the spirit on 
leaving the material body, I now come to 
a third — that of reincarnation. 

In brief, reincarnation is a travesty of 
the sequence of cause and effect. Accord- 
ing to its doctrine action, whether physical 
or mental, leaves its inevitable traces, 
and these traces, whatever the Bible may 
say to the contrary, cannot be wiped out 
in a moment. On them and them only 
rests our future — there can be no inter- 
vening agency. There is, in fact, no 
such thing as a sudden change of heart; 
sudden conversion and the reaUsation of 
forgiveness are only fancies; they have no 



62 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

existence apart from our imagination; and 
the highest planes of spiritual perfection 
can only be obtained by a drastic system of 
purification which may last throughout cen- 
turies. " To-day thou shalt be with me in 
Paradise " is a delusion and a snare. Man, 
himself, must blot out his sins, and, in order 
to do this, he must keep on coming back to 
this physical world in a fresh body till he 
leads a life absolutely free from any vestige 
of vice. Even as man fashioned his present 
fate in the past, so he is fashioning his future 
fate in the immediate present — and what 
is done cannot be undone. It is a cold, 
comfortless and really hopeless creed, for 
it would seem to be quite impossible to rid 
ourselves of all vice, especially if we regard 
vice — -as we ought to do — as something 
more than the mere indulgence of our 
cravings for sexual intercourse or such acts 
as are punishable by the law. Greed, 
selfishness, and scandal-mongering are all 
strictly speaking vices, and what man or 
woman is there, who, looking back upon 
his or her life, can honestly say that it is 
absolutely free from all three of them? 
Hence, it follows that although the world 
is, according to geologists, many milhons 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 63 

of years old, no one alive now — or within 
living man's memory — is within measur- 
able distance of getting to the highest 
spiritual planes. 

It will thus be seen that the principles 
of reincarnation are at total variance with 
the Atonement and the very fundamentals 
of Christ's teachings, so much so that one 
wonders how Spiritualists embracing such 
principles can possibly call themselves 
Christians. But there are many who do, 
many who, regarding our Lord as a 
mere spirit-inspired man and medium, cite 
the following passages from the Gospels 
(notably St John iii. 3-11, and St Matthew 
xviii. 3) in support of their theory that 
Christ Himself was an expounder of the 
doctrine of reincarnation. 

To ordinary and rational minds the 
meaning in these texts will appear quite 
simple and direct; our Lord points out 
to Xicodemus and the disciples the neces- 
sity of becoming simple and trustful as 
children, in order to gain admittance to 
Heaven; and it would be difficult to reahse 
how anyone could read another meaning 
in these texts, had one not learnt from a 
personal knowledge of Spirituahsts that 



64 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

thek imagination is only equalled by their 
astounding self-esteem. Believing, or pre- 
tending to believe, that the spirits of 
Shakespeare and Dryden attend seances 
given by comparative nonentities, and make 
tables and other articles jump about the 
room, Spiritualists stick at nothing, and we 
find them attributing to our Lord's sayings 
cabaHstic secrets that were in total variance 
with His character, and which He would 
never even have conceived. 

Needless to say, our Lord's promise to 
the penitent thief on the Cross that he should 
be with Him that day in Paradise, rules 
out any right on the part of the Spiritualists 
to claim Christ as a reincarnationist. 
Indeed, there is not a tittle of evidence to 
show that the doctrine of reincarnation is 
in any way alluded to in the Scriptures; 
and, in all probability, it owes its founda- 
tion to nothing more substantial than sheer 
craving for novelty; anyhow, it is such 
an outrage on common sense, in its utter 
disregard of such important factors a^ 
heredity and the increase of population, 
that no one would dream of taking it 
seriously, were it not unhappily true that 
there are a great many people— weak-kneed 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 65 

Christians of little sound judgment or logic 
— who are easily influenced by the shallow, 
persuasive oratory characteristic of so many 
of the leading Spiritualists and Theoso- 
phists, and that the latter without scruple 
try to destroy faith in Christianity, which 
is by far the noblest and most consoling 
creed the world has ever known, and offer 
in its stead their fanciful and high-falutin' 
hotch-potch known as Spiritualism and 
Theosophy. It is, in fact, on behalf of 
these more gullible and unstable followers 
of Christ — no matter to what actual de- 
nomination they belong — that a crusade 
against Spiritualism and Theosophy is now 
so urgently needed. 

It is not the Cross that is in danger, it 
will never be in danger so long as the race 
embraces men and women possessing high 
ideals coupled with sound judgment and 
common sense, but only this one section of 
society, and it is to save both their souls 
and bodies that this challenge to their 
Spirituahstic seducers has gone forth. 



CHAPTER IV 

SPIRITUALISM AND THE CHURCHES 

Camouflaged, as the sinister attitude of 
Spiritualists is towards the Old and New 
Testaments, under apparent attempts to 
merely reconcile the tenets of Spiritualism 
with those of the Bible, there is no effort 
whatever made to disguise the malicious 
intentions of Spiritualists towards the 
Churches, which they never miss an oppor- 
tunity of attacking. No worse offender in 
this respect could be found than Dr Peebles. 
After describing — in a pamphlet entitled 
" Christianity, Churchianity or Spirit- 
ualism " (p. 18) — a seance he attended, at 
which a certain Mr Withal made the re- 
markable but not very modest statement 
that he had come into psychic relations with 
'-'-a very exalted" spirit who lived bodily 
at the same time as Jesus of Nazareth, and 
after expressing his admiration at the said 
66 



AND THE CHURCHES 67 

Mr Withal' 8 calm and dignified style 
(people who make such astounding asser- 
tions as Mr Withal need a httle calmness 
to carry them through), Dr Peebles pro- 
ceeds — in a manner that shows he himself 
is wanting in that very quality he apparently 
admires so much in others, namely, dignity 
— to launch into a most violent and unre- 
strained attack on the Churches. He 
begins by telling us that, under the 
Churchianity of Roman Constantine and 
his bishops, etc., blood, due to persecution, 
began to flow " in crimson currents," and 
proceeds to comment on the ' ' two millions " 
of human lives lost in the Crusades, the 
massacre of St Bartholomew's Day, and the 
Edict of February 15th, 1568, whereby, he 
alleges, the Holy Office of Romanism con- 
demned ^11 the inhabitants of the Nether- 
lands to be put to death as heretics. It is 
not only the Catholics^ however, who come 
in for his denunciation, for on page 20 he 
says ** . . . at later date John Calvin, Beza, 
and other sectarian bigots wrote books and 
pamphlets defending the right and lawful- 
ness of religious persecutions," and (on 
same page) " John Knox of Scotland, 
appealing to the Word of God, declared 



68 MENACE OF SPIEITUALISM 

that ' Those guilty of idolatry and heresy 
should be put to death.' " Further on 
he graciously allows that Eoman Catholics 
and Protestants, '' alternating in power," 
slaughtered each other. 

After haranguing what he is pleased to 
term Churchianity in this rather crude and 
elementary fashion, apparently oblivious 
of the fact that butchery was by no means 
confined to Christian countries, but was 
going on — as it is periodically now, in spite 
of united Christian effort — all over the 
world, quite as much, if not more, among 
races who had no orthodox denominational 
creeds, as among those who had, Dr 
Peebles blossoms out, into verse. For 
example, on page 21, we find this couplet : 

'^ Praise God from Whom all blessings flow 
Three thousand Frenchmen sent below," 

which he informs us was sung in Berlin— 
presumably in 1870 — after a victory over 
the French by united bands of " CathoHc 
and Protestant ' ' citizens parading the 
streets. After the late great war one 
cannot, of course, be surprised at anything 
Huns may have done, but one wonders 
whether in the ranks of those united bands 
of citizens Dr Peebles refers to there may 



AND THE CHURCHES 69 

not have been a few German Spiritualists. 
How can he vouch for the fact that 
they consisted entirely of Catholics and 
Protestants ? 

Dr Peebles, however, allows his animus 
against the Churches to carry him from bad 
to worse, for after informing us that all 
fhe persecutions and bloody wars (I presume 
he would say the same of the late greatest 
of all wars) he has specified were the 
legitimate outcome of orthodox theology, 
he concludes with the scathing declaration 
that ''The orthodox theology of salvation 
through blood, the blood of our ancient 
Jew, is still preached in our orthodox 
pulpits." 

In order, perhaps, to preserve some 
semblance of artistic balance, the author, 
after such a thick laying on of blackness, 
thinks it necessary to afford us some relief, 
and, consequently, proceeds to discuss 
the merits of Spiritualism, which he vali- 
antly endeavours to show is superior in 
every way to " Churchianity." Crudely 
and unusually spiteful, however, as these 
attacks of Dr Peebles on the Churches must 
seem to most impartial people, they are, 
as I have said, merely samples of the 



70 MENACE OF 8PIEITUALI8M 

methods employed by many other Spirit- 
uahsts. Mr John Lobb in his " Talks 
with the Dead" tells us that the sph^it of 
the late Eev. William Eogers, or " Hang 
Theology Kogers/' as Mr Lobb terms him 
(p. 113), comes back on purpose to let 
us all know that " Creeds and dogmas find 
no favour on the other side," whilst in a 
paragraph headed ' ' The Christian Church 
To-day" the same author remarks, "The 
Christian Church to-day fails to arrest the 
attention or command the respect of the 
world to whom they preach : their words 
fall dead without the proof of works"; 
and a few hues further on, " The power of 
the Spirit has forsaken the Church of to- 
day." These observations not unnaturally 
lead one to inquire whether the author 
considers the power of the Spirit has for- 
saken the Churches for Spiritualism, and 
whether he honestly believes the latter 
commands the respect of the world, 
because, if so, he could surely have afforded 
us better instances in support of his views 
than those of spirits returning to this earth 
merely for the purpose of playing such 
foohsh tricks as putting sweets in people's 
mouths, thumping on tables, and dropping 



AND THE CHURCHES 71 

fish from the ceihng. Such phenomena 
surely must refute the idea that the 
" Power of the Spirit '' is to be found in 
SpirituaHsm, or that SpirituaHsm commands 
the respect of anything hke so large a 
portion of humanity as the world. 

Indeed, all Mr Lobb's intended biting 
criticism of the Churches could be responded 
to — were it worth while — with, perhaps, 
greater vigour and certainly far more truth. 

Mr Leon Denis in " Christianity and 
Spiritualism " is condescending enough to 
admit (pp. 27-28) that the thoughts of 
Christ still live in the teachings of the 
Church, but that they are dished up in a 
very adulterated form, owing to the desire 
of such ecclesiastics as Popes, etc., ''to 
fortify and render absolute the authority 
of the Church." 

To this, of course, the natural reply is — 
if the teachings of the Churches is, possibly, 
a combination of Divine tenets and acces- 
sories introduced by theologians, what 
about SpirituaHsm which is, unquestionably, 
a medley of Babylonian Paganism, diluted 
Chaldean and other kinds of necromancy, 
gnosticism, Eosicrucianism, Buddhism, 
Theosophy, Unitarianism, and a dozen and 



72 MENACE OF SPIEITUALISM 

one other isms^ which help to make it a 
most unsavoury and indigestible mess. 
Spiritualists should be reminded very 
strongly that before throwing dirty water 
at other people, they should first look to 
their own house. After speaking thus 
sneeringly of Theologians, Mr Leon Denis 
continues (p. 28) in this strain : 

' ' It is by the aid of the light of this new 
revelation, both scientific and philosophical, 
which has already spread throughout the 
whole world, under the name of modern 
Spiritualism, that we will seek to free the 
doctrine of Jesus from the obscurity in 
which the work of centuries has enveloped 
it.'' 

Having thus excited our curiosity and 
raised our expectations mountains high to 
know how Spiritualism purposes to achieve 
a task, in which Mr Denis delicately sug- 
gests the Churches have failed, he proceeds 
to let us down badly by stating that the 
method Spiritualism intends to employ is 
that of ' ' an imposing train of experimental 
proofs," which will furthermore prove that 
Spiritualism and primitive Christianity are 
identical. 

Now the experimental proofs which 



AND THE CHURCHES 73 

Mr Leon Denis would use for this purpose 
must be the phenomena produced by such 
mediums as Eghngton, H.P.B., Eusapia 
Palladino, and present-day birds of the same 
feather — there are no other — therefore it is 
obviously by these phenomena, proved to be 
fallacious, that the wonderful scientific and 
philosophic cult of Spiritualism seeks to 
eclipse the Church; to demonstrate, beyond 
the shadow of a doubt, that Christ was 
simply an ordinary medium, that the hidden 
meaning which they — and they only — 
attribute to His Gospels, are mere common 
or garden secrets of Spiritualism (secrets 
with which all the initiates of that creed 
are familiar), and that Spiritualism and the 
earliest form of Christianity — Christ's 
Christianity, as distinct from the Church's 
Christianity — are identical. Unfortunately 
for Spiritualism, however, despite the 
patronage of a few such eminent scientists 
as Sir Ohver Lodge, Sir W. F. Barrett, the 
late Sir William Crookes (this patronage, 
I suppose, accounts for the dubbing of the 
cult — scientific), the bubble of mediumship 
has been too mercilessly pricked for the 
common-sense man-in-the-street to place 
much confidence in what is left, and it will 



74 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

take something far more subtle and con- 
vincing than any of the spirit phenomena, 
or to give them their more appropriate 
name, " spirit stunts," that we have lately 
seen to induce the main body of Churchmen 
to discard their old faith in a sanctified 
Christ and adopt the mere caricature of 
Divinity Spirituahsts proffer m its stead. 

Spiritualists mockingly remark that the 
Church has failed, but do they honestly 
think that Spiritualism either has succeeded, 
or can succeed, in the future. Its phenom- 
enal side — the side on which it so largely 
depends — is at the present moment more 
debatable than ever. Professional medium 
after medium has been exposed, and many 
of those who have escaped so far may not 
unreasonably be deemed to owe their present 
security to the West End patronage they 
have been lucky enough to secure. Still 
their turn may come, and further striking 
demonstrations of the hyper-credulity of 
certain of the most eminent scientists, to 
whose recommendation they owe so much, 
may, even yet, be forthcoming. Despite its 
boasts to the contrary, the foundations of 
Spiritualism are unstable in the extreme, 
and, in my opinion, a shght breeze — let 



AND THE CHURCHES 75 

alone a searching wind — would bring the 
whole fabric to the ground. 

To revert to its claims of success. 
We have seen, I think, that they cannot 
possibly be said to rest on its alleged 
spiritual phenomena; hence, I suppose, it 
is to the doctrinal side of the cult that we 
must look for them. But what do we find 
here? Long dissertations on love and 
brotherhood. Spiritualism is declared to 
be a kind of freemasonry that knits together 
not only the hearts of men, but their souls, 
a freemasonry consisting of a much more 
poignant and durable bond of love than 
that advocated and practised by other 
creeds. It is also declared to be a bond of 
love and brotherhood which is not confined 
to this material plane; on the contrary, in 
accordance Vvdth the principle of progress 
and evolution (evolution is apparently one 
of the fundamentals of the doctrine of 
Spirituahsm), its practices are carried on in 
the spiritual world, where marriages are 
said to take place as they do on earth. 

In this connection it would be as well, 
perhaps, to remind Spirituahsts that words 
only do not make character, any more than 
mere tenets^ of necessity, lead to practice. 



76 MENACE OF SPIEITUALISM 

It is doubtless very pleasant to be able 
to imagine oneself transported to the very 
highest spiritual planes — planes from which 
so many — perhaps all — of your friends are 
hopelessly barred; and extremely gratify- 
ing to be able to assure those who flock in 
hundreds to Hsten to your alleged psychic 
exploits, that you have been to far-off 
realms and seen celestial visions, which are 
not for the rank and file, but reserved for 
the greatest and wisest of the initiates of 
Spiritualism only. Perhaps it is this mood 
that Mr Leon Denis has in mind when he 
refers to the philosophic side of Spirituahsm. 
But it is a mood hardly in keeping with that 
spirit of love and fraternity breathed out 
so often from Spiritualistic pulpits, and 
referred to so constantly in Spiritualistic 
pamphlets; and it is not altogether in 
harmony with the doctrine of humility 
preached in the Sermon on the Mount, 
which Spiritualists are so fond of holding 
up as a much-needed example to theologians 
and churchgoers. However, as it is un- 
doubtedly the spirit blatantly observable in 
about ninety-nine per cent of Spiritualists, 
it makes one wonder if, after all, they are 
the big success they beheve themselves to 



AND THE CHURCHES 77 

be. Surely the success of a creed is — or 
should be — gauged by the effect it has on 
moral character. Now I can call to mind 
no instance of Spirituahsm having produced 
any particularly great moralist or philan- 
thropist. I have from time to time come 
across many people professing this creed, 
but so far, not one of them has exhibited 
any very lovable quality or any very special 
virtue. On the contrary, by far the 
majority of those Spiritualists with whom 
I have come in contact, have been indisput- 
ably egotistical, self-opinionated, arrogant, 
conceited, absolutely self-satisfied and ex- 
tremely dogmatic. All the failings, in 
fact, that they so generously attribute to 
churchgoers they themselves possess — and 
possess in an almost unlimited degree. Nor 
am I alone in this opinion. My verdict is 
only that of numbers of others — outsiders 
one may say (I, myself, am an undenomin- 
ational Christian), but then you must 
remember that it is the outsider who 
sees most of the game, and conse- 
quently it is the outsider who is best 
able to judge. Inasmuch then as Spiritual- 
ism cannot possibly be said to have an 
elevating effect on character, and may very 



78 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

justly be said to have the reverse, I fail 
to see how it can be described as anything 
whatever in the nature of a success^ unless 
it be a success for the Powers inimical to 
the genuine advancement and moral welfare 
of the human race. 

On the other hand, the Churches are not 
altogether undeserving of criticism. The 
accusation of narrow-mindedness and lack of 
sympathy that Spiritualists and others have 
levelled against them is not wholly without 
substance. They — especially those that 
have temporarily wielded the most power 
— have been autocratic and dictatorial, 
paying too little heed to the great example 
set them by the gentle, Divine Being they 
have all made pretence of imitating. 
Assuredly the greatest worth of Christianity 
lies in the heed it bestows on spiritual and 
moral progress, and the greatest care should 
always be taken to see that candidates 
offering themselves for Holy Orders have 
the moral and spiritual progress of mankind 
at heart. Very obviously this has not 
always been the case, and incalculable harm 
has been inflicted on the cause of the 
Churches — of all Christian denominations — 
because in a matter like this the careless 



AND THE CHUECHES 79 

public does not differentiate — through men 
taking Holy Orders solely for the sake of 
bettering their social position; or — as so 
often happens — leading a slack life on a 
comparatively large stipend in some quiet 
country village; where, in such counties 
as Northamptonshire, Leicestershire and 
Devon, hunting forms an additional attrac- 
tion. Hunting parsons are often jocularly 
referred to as good " sports,'' but the 
person who speaks thus lightly of a priest 
or minister, if he ever thinks at all, does 
not think of the welfare of the Christian 
Churches. It ill befits a pledged disciple 
of Jesus of Nazareth, who was the quintes- 
sence of all that was kindly and decorous, 
to be seen, inspired by cruel motives, and 
often three-quarters drunk, careering madly 
on bareback across fields in pursuit of -i 
small and defenceless animal. 

The Church of Christ is not for such men 
as these, their proper vocation in life is to 
serve behind the pot-house bar, or as a 
marker in a billiard saloon, where their 
coarse jest and often blasphemous jokes 
would fall on no shocked ears. 

Certainly the Churches need reforming, 
and no one knows this better than the 



80 MENACE OF SPIEITUALISM 

priesthood themselves, but the powers that 
be move slowly, and many years may elapse 
before such a purging and purification, as 
alone can be of any real benefit to the 
cause of Christ, can be effected. Let us 
hope it will be sooner than I, for one, 
anticipate. On the other hand, if the 
Churches have seemed, at times, merely a 
cloak for black sheep, it is also equally true 
that they have been the generating instru- 
ment of many of the greatest moralists and 
pubhc benefactors the world has ever pro- 
duced. With all their faults the Christian 
Churches have been proved to possess many 
virtues; and it has been shown that they 
have exercised a restraining and ennobhng 
influence on the masses, such as has 
certainly never been exercised by any other 
creed, and which neither Spiritualism nor 
Theosophy have ever given the sHghtest 
sign of emulating. 

We have now seen — in brief— ^the atti- 
tude of Spirituahsm towards the Churches. 
Let us now review — also in brief — the 
attitude of the Churches towards Spiri- 
1^ tualism. 

Whilst all the Churches are, perhaps, 
equally emphatic in their disapproval of 



AND THE CHUECHES 81 

Spiritualism as a whole, they differ some- 
what in their views regarding its various 
tenets. Most Protestants, for example, do 
not admit even the possibility of spirits of 
any kind, no matter whether of the dead or 
of those that have never been in the flesh, 
responding to the call of living beings and 
perpetrating the phenomena attributed to 
them. They declare — and I think with 
reason — that it is time enough to talk of 
spirit influence being present at seances, 
when we have first of all eliminated all 
possibility of fraud and other natural — 
though, perhaps, at present unknown — 
physical causes. 

With regard to this same question, 
Catholics, on the other hand, do not commit 
themselves to any very decided statements. 
While admitting the possibility of the return 
of the dead under very rare occasions and 
with some very specific reason, as, for 
instance, in the case of Samuel and the 
witch of Endor, they do not consider it at 
all likely that the blessed dead would come 
back for the trivial purposes of manifest- 
ing at a seance. They believe that other 
spirits might respond to the invitation of 
mediums, but that all such spirits w^ould be 

F 



82 MENACE OF SPIEITUALISM 

evil and of the same type as the demons in 
the Bible. They express, however, no 
definite judgment as to the nature of the 
phenomena, or whether they are produced 
through physical or super-physical agency, 
but both they and the Protestant Churches 
roundly condemn Spiritualism as being in 
total opposition to the Divine Will. The 
Eoman Catholic Church of the two is, 
perhaps, the more inclined to confine its 
condemnation of Spiritualism to theological 
grounds. It not unnaturally unites with 
all other denominations in desiring to pro- 
tect its followers from fraud and charla- 
tanism, which it considers may possibly 
take place at seances, but it views the 
matter more seriously from the religious 
standpoint. First of all, the Catholic 
Church regards any attempt whatever at 
communication with the spirit world, in 
other than the form of prayer set down in 
her liturgy and based on the precepts of 
the New Testament, as in direct opposition 
to the Divine Will, and thinks it Her right 
to warn Her children strongly against such 
practices. She has a strong basis for her 
objections in certain passages in the Bible 
to which I have already referred. She is 



AND THE CHUECHES 83 

fully aware that Spiritualists triumphantly 
point to the fact that many of the saints 
had visions, but she wishes to emphasise 
the point that the visions of the saints came 
to them quite spontaneously, i.e., without 
being sought, and, for that reason, cannot 
in any way be placed in the same category 
w^ith the trances of the so-called mediums. 

The Churches, one and all of course, 
utterly condemn the attempts made by the 
Spiritualists to liken our Lord and His 
Apostles, as well as the chosen of God in 
the Old Testament, to present-day mediums 
—their line of argument being, I beheve, 
very much the same as that which I adopted 
when dealing with the question in a previous 
chapter. 

Furthermore, the Catholic Church, 
besides looking upon the mere holding of 
Spiritualistic seances as quite contrary to 
Christ's teachings, also regards all such 
seances as a source of the utmost peril to 
those who partake in them. She believes 
that both mediums and sitters, in courting 
intercourse with the other w^orld, open a 
door to spiritual forces of a nature that is 
totally unknown to them, and which, in all 
probability, would be of an entirely evil 



84 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

origin; but no matter from what source 
these forces emanate, inasmuch as " evoca- 
tion " is in direct opposition to Divine Will, 
the CathoHc Church believes no response 
can be productive of any good, but may 
very easily lead to a degeneration of the 
morals and faith in Christianity of those 
who participate in the proceedings. 

Lastly, the teachings of the Catholic 
Church are utterly antagonistic to the idea 
of any spirit being so much at the mercy 
of a human being as to have to — for that 
is what it practically amounts to — repeatedly 
respond to their beck and call. 

These, I think, are the main objections 
from the religious standpoint that the Catho- 
lic Church entertains towards Spiritualism. 
There are others, I believe, of a purely 
theological nature, but, rather too techni- 
cal to be dealt with here. Most of them, 
including those I have already touched 
upon, seem to be logical and moderate, 
and will, I think, find favour with many 
who, like myself, are merely undenomina- 
tional Christians. 

Indeed, the Churches on the whole would 
seem to have acted with great restraint and 
to have shown surprisingly little animus 



AND THE CHUECHES 85 

against a body of people (i.e., the Spiritual- 
ists) who have been doing their best to 
undermine faith in the Divine nature of 
the Gospels, and to thin the ranks of all 
denominational congregations. 

It may not be without interest to quote 
the opinions of a variety of Church writers 
on the subject, picked from men of all 
denominations, and selected chiefly on 
account of their outspokenness, the majority 
of such writers being more or less guarded 
and reserved. 

In a pamphlet called " Spirituahsm " 
that appears in a work entitled ' ' Lectures 
on the History of Rehgions," Vol. V. (pub- 
lished by the Catholic Truth Society), the 
Eev. R. H. Benson says : " Spiritualism, or 
Necromancy, or the dealing with ' familiar ' 
spirits, has always been regarded by the 
other great world rehgions as a bastard, 
rather than a competitor with a dignity 
comparable with their own." And in 
another place in the same work he remarks, 
** For every man that is converted by 
Spiritualism to believe in the immortality 
of his soul, there are probably a hundred 
who are led by it to relinquish the behefs 
and practices of Christianity.'' And in 



86 MENACE OF SPIEITUALISM 

still a third place, " So far as Spiritualism 
has produced a coherent creed at all, it 
directly traverses even such fundamental 
doctrines as that of the Incarnation." It 
takes little deduction from these lines to 
arrive at the inevitable conclusion that the 
late Monseignor Benson was wholly opposed 
to SpirituaHsm. 

Equally emphatic is the Eev. Winfrid 
0. Burrows, M.A., Vicar of Holy Trinity, 
Leeds, who in a pamphlet entitled " The 
Churchman's Attitude towards the Spirit- 
ualists " (published by the Society for 
Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1900) 
says : " The Christian who believes in our 
Lord, and uses his Bible as his guide, will 
feel that he cannot neglect the Church of 
Christ for Spiritualist Meetings ' ' ; and 
again : ' ' The strange freaks of the Spirit- 
ualists seem, with rare exceptions, to have 
no moral meaning, and to be mere marvels 
intended to rouse curiosity and attract 
attention. Such displays as these our 
Lord always refused to work." And still 
again — " It (Spiritualism) has no message 
of hope. It contains no word about repen- 
tance or conversion, regeneration, or re- 
newal. It leaves the victim of carnal 



AND THE CHURCHES 87, 

passions without hope, except after ' ashes 
of remorse.' " Quoting from a letter he 
received from the Rev. J. R. Ilhngworth, 
Mr Burrows writes : " It is called Spiritual- 
ism, but it is in fact materialism — an 
attempt to return to what St Paul calls 
carnal, and keeps us back, if anything, 
from securing true union with our blessed 
dead, by really spiritual means, viz., 
complete life in God." 

Written rather longer ago, but still fully 
applicable to these times, for neither 
Spiritualism nor the Churches' attitude 
tow^ards it have changed to any very 
appreciable extent, is a pamphlet called 
" Spirituahsm. Tested by Scripture," 
written by the Rev. A. R. Fausset, M.A., 
in 1885, and published by the Church of 
England Book Society. In it the author 
says: "Since Spiritualism opposes many 
of the fundamental doctrines of the written 
Word of God, it cannot be from God"; 
and further on, "It is contrary to all 
probability that holy angels would stoop 
from Heaven to such low, trivial and even 
blasphemous manifestations, or that saved 
souls with Christ should come for such 
calls; or the lost be allowed to leave their 



88 MENACE OF SPIEITUALISM 

prison to gratify man's forbidden curiosity.'' 
And, after quoting Ecclesiastes ix. 6, in 
support of such views, he continues — 
" The spirit manifestations can only eman- 
ate from the Prince of the powers of the 
air, the spirit which ruleth in the children 
of disobedience." On another page he 
remarks, " Simultaneously, the doctrine of 
evolution and the science of comparative 
religion are undermining the exclusive 
authority of the Bible, as the only infalhble 
revelation from God." Elsewhere in the 
same work (p. 15) we read : " Consulters of 
the dead are sorcerers " and " sorcery and 
necromancy are among the foretold signs 
of the last days," 1 Timothy iv. 1; and 
again (p. 13), " SpirituaHsm accords with 
the old Babylonian pagan doctrine of seven 
spheres." 

The same author gives the following 
extract from, a letter sent him by a minister 
of the Presbyterian Church in Auckland, 
New Zealand. " Manifestations have often 
been counterfeited," the minister says, 
" from mercenary and other unworthy 
motives, but there are real manifestations," 
and he goes on to state, '' I have abandoned 
the practice of holding intercourse with 



AND THE CHUECHES 89 

these unknown agencies, which I have been 
led to conclude are demoniacal. Besides 
the unrehabihty of the communications, I 
have found them sometimes shockingly 
blasphemous and vulgar in the extreme. 
SpirituaHsm has excited a painful effect on 
even ministers known to me," and Mr 
Fausset goes on to explain that in numerous 
cases the result of Spiritualistic deaHngs 
has been insanity. 

Nor is the above case the only one I can 
quote of ministers who have dabbled in 
Spirituahsm finally awaking to the fact that 
it is really very dangerous. The Brooklyn 
Eagle some years ago contained a report 
of a lecture delivered by the Eev. W. H. 
Clagett, President of the Board of Trustees 
of the Texas Presbyterian University, in the 
Association Hall of Brooklyn, N.Y. Dr 
Clagett was once a Spiritualist, but the 
following extracts from his speech will show 
to what an extent his opinions on the 
subject changed, and what a revulsion of 
feeling he experienced in connection with it. 

' ' I was a firm behever in it (Spiritual- 
ism)," he says, " for years, often acting as 
a medium in private seances. There is a 
deeper interest in this question than many 



90 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

Christians think. Spiritualism is one of 
the greatest powers for evil in the world." 
And again — "I beheve there is such a 
thing as communication between men and 
spirits. Satan, in the form of Spirituahsm, 
offers to bring the loved one back again 
so that we can hear his voice and actually 
see his face. ... By attacking the soul 
in this subtle and plausible manner it is not 
strange that Satan in the form of Spirit- 
ualism leads many astray.'' But though 
Dr Clagett expresses his belief in the possi- 
bility of spirits — evil spirits — being present 
at seances, he also believes in the extreme 
probability of fraud. "To think," he 
observes, "of a wife or mother, even if 
she could communicate with us on earth, 
going to a woman whom she never knew 
and with whom she would not have associ- 
ated if she had, and telling her the most 
sacred things — the idea is degrading and a 
dishonour. Spirituahsm is a fraud, two- 
thirds of it being devil at second-hand, and 
the rest of it devil at first hand." These 
remarks of Dr Clagett should, I think, 
appeal to all lovers of common sense. I, 
for one, am quite certain that neither my 
mother nor father, who have both passed 



AND THE CHUECHES 91 

over, no matter how fond of me, would 
ever dream of trying to deliver a message 
to me through the medium of a professional 
Spiritualist and in the presence of complete 
strangers, even though these strangers 
were eminent members of the Psychical 
Research Society, out, as they profess to 
be, solely in the interest of science. No, 
if it were possible to communicate at all, 
I am quite sure they would communicate 
direct, and not through the agency of any 
other living person, least of all one with 
whom they would have had absolutely 
nothing in common when alive. The plea 
that it is only so-called mediums who 
possess the psychic faculties requisite for 
such communications is undoubtedly open 
to question, for it is quite certain that 
spirits that manifest themselves spontane- 
ously, often do so to people having no 
claim whatever to these alleged special 
properties, and I am inclined — after many 
years' experience, too — to agree with Dr 
Clagett that Spiritualism is a fraud, the bulk 
of the so-called phenomena being merely due 
to trickery on the part of mediums, and the 
rest either to some subtler, comparatively 
unknown natural causes, or to a spirit 



92 MENACE OF SPIEITUALISM 

agency entirely different from that which it 
usually purports to be. The fact that the 
messages or visions are sometimes of an 
apparently celestial nature is no proof what- 
ever that their origin — supposing they really 
do come from the spirit world — is Divine. 
The fairest flower to look at not infrequently 
contains the deadliest poison, and drugs 
that smell and taste the sweetest are often 
the most injurious to the system. That 
which is the most harmful to man can 
assume any guise. 

In a book entitled ' ' The Powers of the 
Air/' the author, who was once a medium, 
declares he once came under the control 
of a spirit which professed to be the 
Almighty and actually hoodwinked him into 
believing that he — the medium — was speci- 
ally ordained to redeem the world. To 
use the author's own language: ''The 
spirit then went on to say, ' I have chosen 
you to be my second Christ; I have 
appointed Jesus, my son, to instruct you 
and make you wise in all things — to do my 
will in the great work of man's salvation.' " 
The author, so he relates, continued obey- 
ing the devil's instructions, firmly believing 
in the Divinity it professed, until foretold 



AND THE CHURCHES 93 

events so frequently turned out in direct 
opposition to prophecy, and he met with 
such constant failure and disappointment, 
that his suspicions were aroused and he 
finally came to the conclusion that this 
spirit, far from being what it purported to 
be, was something very evil. He then 
struggled hard against it, and eventually — 
though not without desperate efforts — for 
when once you really attract spirit influ- 
ence, it is extremely reluctant to leave you 
— completely banished it. Before it took 
its final departure, however, the author 
extracted from it a very remarkable confes- 
sion which he narrates in detail. Here, for 
example, are some of the questions he put 
to it and its replies : 

Question : ' ' Are not the doctrines taught 
generally by Spiritualists denominated in 
the Scripture the doctrine of devils or 
demons? " 

Ansiver: "Yes, they are, in very deed, 
the doctrines of devils or demons, because 
they generally reject the teachings of Jesus 
Christ and His Apostles and followers.'' 

Question: "How do the inhabitants of 
your world mostly spend their time? " 



94 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

Ansioer : "We spend the time, mostly, 
since the discovery of the mediumistic 
communications, in developing mediums, 
in making psychological experiments with 
them and in communicating through them/' 

Question : " Do you not think that good 
spirits develop mediums, and communicate 
through them as well as yourselves? " 

Answer : " 1 think not : we think we are 
warranted in the conclusion that no pious 
dead, nor the spirits of great men made per- 
fect, nor angels, have anything to do with 
controlling mediums at the present day." 

Further questions put to it elicited the 
information that evil spirits ' ' have the 
power to produce lifelike images in the 
minds of impressible mediums," which are 
often misinterpreted by the latter into being 
actual sights of real objects — or, in other 
words, the controlling spirit influence makes 
the medium mistake the purely subjective 
for the objective, a mistake which, in my 
opinion, almost invariably occurs. 

The author goes on to explain from the 
information afforded him by his conquered 
'' control " that spirits, when once invited, 
' ' have the power of using the human body. 



AND THE CHURCHES 95 

with all its organs and faculties," and can, 
in addition, and with the assistance of 
countless other spirits, move the weightiest 
of tables and chairs. The author further- 
more tells us that he received practical 
demonstrations from his ' ' ex-control ' ' and 
some of its associate spirits of their power 
to imitate voices, and thus trick people into 
beheving they were actually conversing 
with departed friends and relatives; and he 
sums up all his experiences with this type 
of seance and controlling spirit thus : 
'' They delight in evil as their object, and 
especially that branch of evil called decep- 
tion. If any one thing pleases them more 
than any other, it is to make those in the 
earth life believe the most monstrous and 
absurd theories." 

The International Bible Students Associ- 
ation, which has important branches in 
Brookl5rn, London, Melbourne, and many 
other large cities, published a very bitter 
and vindictive little booklet against Spirit- 
uahsm in 1897. It is entitled " Spiritism — 
Proofs that it is Demonish " — and may be 
said to represent the views of many 
thousands of orthodox Christians on Spirit- 
tuahsm and such kindred subjects as Theo- 



96 MENACE OF SPIEITUALISM 

sophy and Christian Science, some twenty 
years ago. In this work (p. 81) we find the 
following extracts from a somewhat inter- 
esting article by the Rev. A. B. Simpson : 
" The healing of diseases is also said to 
follow the practices of Spiritualism and 
Animal Magnetism, Clairvoyancy, etc. We 
will not deny that while some of the mani- 
festations of Spiritualism are undoubted 
frauds, there are many that are unquestion- 
ably supernatural, and are produced by 
forces for which physical science has no 
explanation. It is no use to try to meet 
this terrific monster of Spiritualism, in 
which, as Joseph Cook says, is, perhaps, 
the great ' if ' of our immediate future in 
England and America, with the hasty and 
shallow denial of the facts, or their explan- 
ation as tricks of legerdemain. They are 
often undoubtedly real and superhuman. 
They are the revived forces of the Egyptian 
magicians, the Grecian oracles, the Roman 
haruspices, the Indian medicine men." 

I have already alluded to the fact that 
many Spiritualists constantly refer to God 
as the Spirit of Love, and never seem to 
tire of emphasising the fact that we should 
all dwell together like brothers and sisters. 



AND THE CHURCHES 97 

and love one another. The love they thus 
frequently advocate, however, is not the 
love advocated in the Bible, but rather the 
kind of love the Bible strongly condemns. 
It is the love that recognises no confines or 
restrictions; that is purely unconventional 
and takes into no account marriage laws, 
or the ban society has so rightly placed on 
unnatural friendship. It is free lance, 
anarchical love that, if once permitted and 
encouraged, would soon lead to utter social 
chaos, and eventually to the hopeless, 
wholesale destruction of the race. And 
there are grave signs in England to-day that 
this kind of love is on the increase and is no 
longer solely confined to one sex. Indeed, 
I have reason to believe there are clubs and 
restaurants in London at the present time, 
whose membership and clientele is solely 
confined to women, who meet there as 
lovers rather than friends. These women 
all profess to be men-haters and certainly 
never miss an opportunity of abusing men 
and doing everything they possibly can to 
damage their reputation and chances in life. 
Wives are set against and estranged from 
their husbands, sisters poisoned against 
their brothers, and I even know instances 

G 



98 MENACE OF SPIEITUALISM 

of mothers having been won over and set 
against their sons. The weapons generally 
emplo5^ed are the usual gags of the 
advocates of women's suffrage, i.e., the 
unfairness of the marriage laws and of 
paying men better than women for the same 
amount of work done, and the many alleged 
privileges enjoyed by men that are denied 
to women ; to which are added various other 
grievances, some, no doubt, more or less 
real, and others wholly imaginary, but 
all, nevertheless, very highly coloured. 
This anti-men campaign was most conspic- 
uous during the Parliamentary Election of 
the winter of 1919, and is being pushed 
most emphatically all over England at the 
present moment. Though, no doubt, it 
owes its origin to some extent, at least, 
to jealousy and unsatisfied cravings for 
motherhood, as well as to other more 
or less natural causes, it also receives 
much inspiration and obtains considerable 
impetus from Spiritualism and Spiritualism's 
kindred cults — Theosophy and Christian 
Science. 

It is a fact that cannot be got away from 
that a not inconsiderable percentage of 
women Spiritualists, Theosophists and 



AND THE CHURCHES 99 

Christian Scientists are pronounced anti- 
menites. " We were told," a lady Spirit- 
ualist observed to me some months ago, 
" at a seance held in our club, not to have 
anything to do with men, that men are 
all beasts and tyrants, and that we must 
oppose them in every possible way, and 
try and oust them from all their present 
positions of power and prominence. We 
were further told that man's love is a very 
poor thing compared with woman's, and 
that women should only select friends and 
confidants from among their own sex." The 
lady went on to inform me that the same 
spirit " control " had assured both her and 
her clubmates that the Creator was a woman 
and not a male, as one had always been led 
to suppose from the Scriptures, and that 
the Divine feminine mind, which controlled 
everything, was strongly opposed to the 
male sex, which it regarded as the source 
of all the wrongs for which mankind in 
general had suffered. Now one would be 
inclined to regard all this lightly were it 
but an isolated example, but unfortunately 
it is not. This same doctrine of the omni- 
potence of the female element in the super- 
physical world and of its unqualified 



100 MENACE OF SPIEITUALTSM 

antipathy to the male sex finds many women 
supporters, who are firm in their conviction 
that it emanates from bond fide spiritual 
sources and, consequently, regard it with 
a certain veneration. 

Women mediums — who are, in my 
opinion, not infrequently bribed — are 
constantly professing to receive messages 
confirming it, and it is propagated not only 
throughout the length and breadth of 
England, but in America and even India. 
At present the damage it is doing is mainly 
confined to the home-life, where it separ- 
ates husband from wife and splits up the 
family circle, and, of course, to established 
religion, to which its tenets are wholly 
opposed. It will soon, however, work far 
wider havoc; the population question, 
especially of the upper and middle classes, 
will be seriously affected by it, and it may 
actually lead to a sex war involving the 
wholesale and final destruction of the 
British, as well as other races. As I have 
already suggested, the doctrine of free- 
love, in a specific sex sense, is to no small 
degree closely affiliated with this doctrine 
of women's right to predominate, and of 
man's iniquities. 



AND THE CHURCHES 101 

Let us now see what the Bible Students 
Association has to say with regard to Free 
Love in their booklet. Turning to page 38, 
we find : ' ' The strongly marked tendency 
of Spiritism towards free-love-ism served to 
bring it into general disrepute among the 
pure-minded, who concluded that, if the 
influence of the dead was properly repre- 
sented in some living advocates of Spiritism, 
then the social conditions beyond the vale 
of death must be much worse, much more 
impure, than they are in the present life, 
instead of much better, as these demon 
spirits claim. It denies the Atonement and 
the Lordship of Christ, while it claims that 
He was a spirit medium of low degree ; and, 
furthermore, abundant testimony could be 
quoted from prominent Spiritists proving 
that the tendencies of Spiritism are 
extremely demoralising . ' ' 

With this idea of the free-love evil 
obviously still in mind the author of this 
same pamphlet goes on to quote the testi- 
mony of Mr J. F. Whitney, Editor of the 
Pathfinder (N.Y.) and once an advocate of 
Spirituahsm. " Now after a long and 
constant watchfulness,'' he writes (p. 39), 
'' seeing for months and years its progress 



102 MENACE OF SPIEITUALISM 

and its practical workings upon its devotees, 
its believers and its mediums, we are com- 
pelled to speak our honest conviction, which 
is that the manifestations coming through 
the acknowledged mediums, who are desig- 
nated as rapping, tipping, writing and 
entrance mediums, have a baneful influence 
upon believers, and create discord and 
confusion; that the generality of these 
teachings inculcate false ideas, approve of 
selfish individual acts, and endorse theories 
and principles which, when carried out, 
debase and make man little better than the 
brute. Seeing, as we have," this writer 
adds, " the gradual progress it makes with 
its believers, particularly its mediums, from 
lives of morality to those of sensuality and 
immorality, gradually and cautiously under- 
mining the foundation of good principles, 
we look back with amazement to the radical 
change which a few months will bring about 
in individuals ; for its tendency is to approve 
and endorse each individual act and char- 
acter, however good or bad these acts 
may be." The bad influence of the 
mediums to which Mr Whitney refers is, 
without the shadow of a doubt, chiefly 
relegated in the channels to which I have 



AND THE CHURCHES 103 

referred; and in the same pamphlet we 
read : " So bold and outspokenly immoral 
did some of the prominent representatives 
of Spiritism become, especially the female 
mediums (and most of its mediums are 
female) that the moral sense of civihsation 
was shocked.'' Also an instance is given 
(see p. 41) of a woman who was induced 
by Spirituahsm to enter into such unnatural 
excesses that the very thought of them 
eventually drove her mad and she had 
to be confined in an asylum. " A gentle- 
man who had occasionally attended on 
preaching," he says, " asked that an 
interview be granted his sister whom he 
would bring from Cleveland for the 
purpose. She was, he said, labouring 
under the delusion that she had committed 
the unpardonable sin and he hoped we 
could disabuse her mind of the thought 
which sometimes made her wild. We 
consented, and she came. She told us how 
she had met in California a man who had 
a familiar spirit and occult powers. At first 
disbelieving, she afterwards became his 
co-worker in ' mysteries ' resembling 
witchcraft, and had finally inveigled and 
injured a ' dear female friend.' Since 



104 MENACE OF SPIEITUALISM 

then remorse had seized her, and she had 
been tortured and at times frenzied, and 
hope had forever fled." The end, as I 
have said, was lunacy, and I have no 
doubt whatever there are dozens of similar 
cases in our asylums to-day. I think a 
thorough analysis of Chelsea and the West 
End might prove the truth of this assertion, 
but the result of such an analysis cannot be 
made public, since Spirituahsm has now 
become a fashion, and whenever an attempt 
is made to clean out a quagmire containing 
names of any special political or social 
note, it is instantly quashed. 

I have, however, no desire to enter more 
deeply into this question of " free love 
without men" 'in this volume. It is 
sufficient for me to hint that it exists in far 
greater force than the average person 
thinks, that it finds its recruits almost 
solely among the ranks of the more bitter 
adherents of the cause of women's rights, 
and that Spiritualism, by aiding and abet- 
ting it, is helping to bring about what will 
— unless soon checked — prove to be the 
biggest calamity that has ever befallen the 
world — far bigger, even, tlian the late 
great war. 



AND THE GHUECHES 105 

As I think I have now produced sufficient 
evidence to show how strongly not only one 
but all orthodox Christian denominations 
are opposed to Spiritualism and everything 
that is akin to it, I will conclude with a few 
very brief extracts from the long corres- 
pondence on the subject in the Sunday 
Times of 1917. In the issue of that paper 
for 16th September, Mr Alfred Bruce 
Douglas writes : 

*' As a Cathohc I am forbidden to take 
part in a Spiritual seance under pain of 
mortal sin, nor have I the least temptation 
to do so. But before I became a Catholic 
I occasionally dabbled in Spiritualism, and 
my own experiences were quite enough 
to convince me that the phenomena are 
sometimes perfectly genuine and perfectly 
unaccountable except on a supernatural 
basis. ... The phenomena of Spiritualism 
are, the Church teaches, produced by 
devils and evil spirits. Their object is to 
betray and deceive the human race. Con- 
tinued indulgence in Spiritualism leads to 
madness, folly and despair, and loss of 
real faith." 

Again, in a letter to the same paper, 
pubHshed 2nd September, 1917, Mr Samuel 
George says : 



106 MENACE OF SPIEITUALISM 

'' I began as a would-be believer in 
Spiritualism. 1 am now an unbeliever 
because I know both sides. . . . The 
psychists complain about the bad doctrines 
of the Churches and despise those who 
adopt them. They justify their own exis- 
tence as psychists as a result of this defect, 
yet at the same time provide for mental 
consumption worse doctrines than the 
Churches teach. ^' 

And, lastly, in a letter published in the 
same paper on 23rd September, 1917, 
M. J. L. Bissley, a member of the Church 
of England and a Cathohc, says : 

'' Spirituahsm is a culture which it is 
folly to deny, but a greater one to culti- 
vate. It has never yet saved a soul ; it has 
ruined many, as it is meant to." 

The words of this gentleman are tanta- 
mount to saying Spiritualism is a vice. He 
is correct. Spirituahsm is a vice, a vice 
that begets countless other vices, and as 
such it should be stamped out, and stamped 
out quickly. 



CHAPTER V 

THE PHENOMENAL SIDE OF SPIRITUALISM 
AND ITS EFFECT ON THE HEALTH 

I HAVE now come to what may, perhaps, 
be more correctly termed the phenomenal 
side of Spiritualism, though it is, as I have 
said before, so closely interwoven with the 
doctrinal branch that it is almost impossible 
to disassociate the one from the other. 

At most Spiritualistic gatherings, where 
anything in the nature of doctrine is 
preached, phenomena of some description 
or other are also called into requisition. 

If one wishes for a practical demonstra- 
tion of the effect of Spiritualism on health, 
one need not go far afield; one has only to 
attend a Spiritualistic meeting, or seance, 
or even partake of afternoon tea at any 
Spiritualistic club, and one sees abundant 
evidence of it. The devotees of Spiritual- 
ism are almost universally people of the 
107 



108 MENACE OF SPIEITUALISM 

same type — men and women — mostly the 
latter — with pale, restless eyes and ill- 
balanced faces. Here and there one sees 
a massive and seemingly well-proportioned 
head, but there is usually some tell-tale 
characteristic — either a wild, far-away 
look in the eyes, or an expression of 
childish credulity and simplicity spread 
over the whole countenance, but particu- 
larly noticeable in the mouth. 

Most Spiritualists are elderly, and not 
a few. in their dotage, for Spiritualism is a 
cult that, saving in the case of the abnormal 
and weak-minded, rarely appeals to youth. 
I think, too, one would not be far wrong 
in saying that no small percentage of its 
devotees are epileptics. Here and there, 
it is true, at a Spiritualistic gathering, one 
comes across more or less normal types, 
but these, it will be found, are generally 
either strangers who have gone there out of 
mere curiosity; or women who are there to 
make use of other women, either for poh- 
tical or merely vicious purposes, sometimes 
for both ; or harpies, in the now fashionable 
guise of professional psychics, and these you 
can generally tell by the watchful expres- 
sion in their hard, mean eyes, their smug 



ITS EFFECT ON HEALTH 109 

smiles, and their general air of shrewd 
observation and furtiveness. 

The people in this assembly whose whole 
appearance and atmosphere strike you as 
being furthest removed from the spirit of 
the real Christ and His saints, are, in all 
probability, those self-designated, profes- 
sional psychists, who proclaim that they are 
conversant with denizens of the highest 
spiritual planes; and as for the rest — the 
neurotics and ansemics, who drink in so 
eagerly every word of the grandiloquent 
clap-trap that falls from the lips of the 
lecturers or speakers, and who watch so 
greedily for any kind of psychical phen- 
omena however trivial and absurd — one 
has only to exchange a few words with them 
to perceive how thoroughly unstable and 
unbalanced their minds have become. 
They iattribute everything — even the most 
trifling details of their daily lives — to 
spirit influence, and see, in the most natural 
and commonplace happenings, the work of 
some mysterious visitor from the super- 
physical world. 

I know of one old gentleman, for 
example, a confirmed Spiritualist, who 
never puts on his hat, or eats a crumb of 



110 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

bread without asking permission of his 
spirit guide, and a correspondent wrote to 
me from Birmingham to the effect that he 
had been suffering lately from excessive 
constipation through a band of spirits 
(whom he named individually) never per- 
mitting him to take any remedy or obtain 
relief. 

There is also amongst my acquaintances 
a confirmed Spiritualist and Theosophist in 
London, who can never converse with you 
for long without saying: " It must be so, 
because the White Order have testified to 
it." The White Order, I learned on 
inquiry, is the source of certain revelations 
made periodically to the old gentleman by 
a notorious medium, who declares that he 
frequently visits the angels in the highest 
celestial spheres and is by them initiated 
into the future happenings on this earth. 

Spiritualism acts on some people like a 
drug — it intoxicates them. The more they 
taste of it, the more they want, until they 
eventually arrive at such a pitch that they 
feel they cannot possibly do without it. They 
are either always being told something by 
spirit voices, or automatic writing, or raps; 
or else they are continually fancying they 



ITS EFFECT ON HEALTH 111 

see angels (the angel craze has very much 
increased since the war, and it no doubt 
received an additional impetus from the 
episode known as " The Angels of Mons "). 
Of course, it is the excitement of the 
seance that produces this intoxication. The 
type of neurotic I have specified has always, 
perhaps, craved for excitement and sensa- 
tion (both are recognised symptoms of his 
malady), and he finds these cravings best 
provided for in the menu of the Spiritual- 
ists. He goes to a seance where he sits 
in semi-darkness, momentarily expecting 
something to happen, and this state of 
chronic expectancy is like nectar to him. 
When he gets home he tries a little table- 
turning or crystal-gazing in his bedroom, 
and then, after a fitful night's sleep, in 
which his dreams are well garnished with 
visions of angels, spirits of the dead, 
creaking tables and flying tambourines, he 
awakens, all hurry for the day to pass 
quickly and for it to be time again for him 
to attend another seance. In the end he 
becomes a constant attendant at such pro- 
ceedings and clings to them for just as long 
as his fast-decaying mentality will permit 
him. The kind of excitement one gets at 



112 MENACE OF SPIEITUALISM 

seances is, moreover, not only bad for 
the mind, but it affects other organs as well ; 
from the constant straining of the ears to 
catch the sound of creakings, taps and spirit 
voices, those organs gradually become 
impaired, whilst the sight suffers equally 
through the strain of trying to make out 
spirit forms and ordinary material objects 
in the whole or semi-darkness. 

Excitement, too, of any sort, is bad for 
the heart, and the constant thrills one gets 
upon hearing even the most usual noises — 
for darkness apparently intensifies sound — 
can only have the most weakening and 
injurious effect — an effect that might very 
well be fatal in the case of anyone suffer- 
ing from actual heart disease. Besides, 
unnatural excitement of this description 
often encourages, if it does not actually 
produce, either locomotor ataxia or 
cerebral paralysis. 

Also, I have heard that the excitement 
occasioned by seeing a table suddenly rise 
and tilt has brought on fits— apoplectic as 
well as epileptic. 

But one of the commonest results of 
continually going to seances, and constantly 
consulting so-called professional psychists 



ITS EFFECT ON HEALTH 113 

— no matter what their modus operandi, or 
whether their alleged spirit communications 
be celestial or otherwise — is insanity. I 
myself have come across many people who 
have succmnbed to the craze for attending 
seances, and have eventually gone mad. 

One case, for instance, was recorded in 
the daily papers not so very long ago, and 
w^ill, I dare say, be recalled by those who 
happen to have read it. 

A young lady, well known in society, 
w^as induced to become a Spiritualist 
through the prospects held out to her 
of being able to penetrate into the deepest 
mysteries — or, in Spiritualistic parlance, 
get initiated into the innermost secrets 
concerning another life. She consulted 
mediums and attended seances, and, in 
the end, fancied she heard spirit voices 
continually telling her to join her friends 
and affinity on the other side. At last, 
unable to bear the strain of hearing these 
incessant voices any longer, she went to 
stay in the country, and, in the grey hours 
of the morning, the time when she had 
been led to believe her spirit friends were 
appealing most strongly for her advent 
amongst them, she committed suicide. 

H 



114 MENACE OF SPIETTUALISM 

Another case of a victim who was well 
known to me — at least by repute — is that 
of a man, the son of a Northamptonshire 
vicar, who was intimately acquainted with 
certain of my oldest friends. Falling 
under the spell of Spiritualism he, too, soon 
became convinced that spirit voices, which 
he had first heard at seances, followed him 
everywhere, and kept on appealing to him 
to take the plunge and see what it was 
like behind the veil. Consequently, one 
evening, when he was having supper with 
my friends, he suddenly sprang up, and, 
declaring that he could hear the voices 
whispering in his ears and telling him he 
was wanted — wanted badly — he hastened 
out of the room, into the darkness of the 
night. The following morning he was 
found on the railway line— run over, and 
there is little doubt that, obeying the 
injunctions of the real or imaginary spirit 
voices, he had placed himself there for that 
purpose. Anyhow, a verdict of suicide 
whilst in a state of unsound mind was 
returned. 

I can also quote, from personal know- 
ledge, a third case, i.e., that of a retired 
army officer who, from continually attend- 



ITS EFFECT ON HEALTH 115 

ing table-tilting seances presided over by 
professional mediums, took to hearing 
rappings in his own house. They came to 
him at all hours, but most frequently in the 
night, until he was seldom free from them, 
and, consequently, had a very severe 
nervous breakdown. However, acting on 
his doctor's advice, he gave up Spiritualism, 
and was eventually restored to health. 

From these examples I conclude that no 
person who has made a habit of continually 
attending seances for any length of time 
can hope to escape from all the ill effects 
to which they have thereby subjected their 
mind and body, and if they do not in 
the end become absolutely demented, they 
certainly degenerate and become very far 
from either sound or normal. Hitherto, 
whenever this question of Spiritualism 
causing insanity has been dealt with, it has 
at once been suggested that, in all prob- 
ability, those Spirituahsts who have gone 
mad would have done so in any case — that 
is to say, they would have gone mad, had 
they never heard of a stance or seen a 
medium. Very possibly, but, on the other 
hand, there is no doubt whatever that 
Spiritualism has precipitated their insanity ; 



116 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

and if the spirits that demonstrate them- 
selves at seances and private sittings come 
from the high and celestial planes they 
profess to come from, how is it that they 
have such an injurious effect on the mind? 
If they really are angels, or the spirits of 
good people, would they not invariably 
exercise a soothing and healing effect on the 
brain, instead of irritating and inflaming it? 

No', Spiritualists cannot get away from 
the fact that, despite all their boasted 
intimacy — which generally amounts to 
revolting familiarity — with angels and 
spirits of the dead — entities which, when of 
flesh and blood, possessed quite out of the 
ordinary intelligence and moral qualities, 
and were only too anxious to do anything 
that would benefit mankind — no informa- 
tion that has in the shghtest degree aided 
medical research has been obtained. 

Furthermore, Spiritualism can point to 
no really authenticated case of malignant 
disease being cured through mediumship, 
or to anyone who could be pronounced by 
a quite impartial medical man to be the 
better in health for his constant attendance 
at seances, and his habit of imbibing 
Spirituahstic Hterature. It seems to me to 



I 



ITS EFFECT ON HEALTH 117 

make little material difference to my argu- 
ment that Spiritualism induces insanity, 
whether the people that have become insane 
through attending seances were naturally 
weak-minded or not. In either case the 
spirit influence at seances is thus proved to 
be the reverse of beneficial, and any attempt 
to camouflage these spirits under the guise 
of angels or equally well-disposed super- 
physical entities is useless. It will be 
argued, of course, that the enrolment of 
such men as Sir Oliver Lodge and Sir Arthur 
Conan Doyle in the ranks of Spiritualists 
must, at any rate, modify my destructive 
criticism. I do not think so. On the 
contrary, I rather think it strengthens it. 
Both Sir Oliver Lodge and Sir A. C. 
Doyle are geniuses in their legitimate 
calhngs, and with regard to genius I cannot 
do better than suggest that the reader 
should refer to an article by Mr James 
Sully, author of " The Human Mind " and 
" Illusions," that appeared in The Nine- 
teenth Century, June, 1885. The following 
extracts from it may, however, serve to 
illustrate my purpose : 

(1) '' Genius must be looked upon as 
the most signal and impressive manifesta- 



118 MENACE OF SPIEITUALISM 

tion of that tendency of Nature to variation 
and individuation in her organic formations 
which modern science is compelled to retain 
among its unexplained facts." 

(2) " Our conclusion is that the pos- 
session of genius carries with it special 
liabilities to the action of the disintegrating 
forces which environ us all. It involves 
a state of delicate equipoise, of unstable 
equilibrium, in the psycho-physical organ- 
isation. Paradoxical as it may seem, one 
may venture to affirm that great original 
power of mind is incompatible with nice 
adjustment to surroundings, and so with 
perfect well-being." 

From these two quotations I think there 
can be little doubt that in the author's 
opinion geniuses are always more or less 
abnormal, and, being such, have a natural 
fascination for abnormal subjects. Hence, 
it is not at all strange to find both Sir Oliver 
Lodge and Sir A. C. Do3^1e have become 
infatuated with Spiritualism. 

But to revert to the injurious effect 
Spiritualism has on health. I think I 
cannot do better in support of this theory 
than to quote the views and opinions of 
certain people — chiefly medicals — who are 
specially qualified to speak on the subject. 

I will, then, refer first of all to John M, 



I 



ITS EFFECT ON HEALTH 119 

Maccormac, M.D., L.E.C.P., and S.Ed., 
Physician to the Victoria Hospital for 
diseases of the nervous system, Belfast, 
who, in a work entitled " Abnormal Ideas 
and Nervous Super-excitability" (pub- 
hshed by William Mullan & Sons, Belfast, 
1899) says on page 19 : " The next point 
for our consideration is that which relates 
to the troubles of the nervous system which 
arise from or are associated with the 
teaching of mysticism." On page 20 he 
gives the following definition of mysticism : 
" The common character of the chief 
aspects of mysticism is an immense longing 
for happiness, coupled with a profound 
contempt for sensuous things. Eegarding 
the joys of this world as ever-changing and 
inseparable from pain, the mystic seeks to 
realise at once the joys of an eternal bliss," 
and this definition will be seen to apply very 
accurately to a large class of Spirituahsts 
at all events, who, scorning the attractions 
offered by the inhabitants and scenery of 
this world, seek to obtain immediate 
entrance to or intercourse with the so- 
called highest spiritual planes through the 
instrumentality of a medium or personal 
experiments with crystals, etc. 



120 MENACE OF SPIEITUALISM 

Dr Maccormac goes on to define the two 
classes into which he divides mystics, the 
one — that of the people who " despise the 
body with all its wondrous organisms and 
capabilities, that they may seek to attain to 
a mysterious union with or absorption into 
some divine essence,'^ and the other, those 
who ' ' yield themselves to a certain eleva- 
tion of the spirit, supposed to be the 
outcome of some direct spiritual manifesta- 
tion." In both cases, as he points out, the 
results of such behefs and practices are 
equally injurious to the nervous system. 

Dr Maccormac' s booklet is quite short, 
only thirty-one pages, but it would be well 
worth the while of anyone who is contem- 
plating taking up Spirituahsm to read it, 
before embarking on such an extremely 
perilous undertaking. 

In another work, entitled " Types of 
Insanity : an Illustrated Guide in the 
Physical Diagnosis of Mental Disease," by 
Allan McLane Hamilton, M.D., one of the 
consulting physicians to the Insane Asylums 
of New York City, and the Hudson Eiver 
State Hospital for the Insane, etc. (pub- 
Hshed by Wilham Wood & Co., New York, 
1883), the author describes many interesting 



ITS EFFECT^ ON HEALTH 121 

cases of insane people who labour under 
the delusion they hear and see things, or 
in other words are perpetually clairaudient 
and clairvoyant. 

For example, opposite Plate V. and under 
the heading of " Subacute Mania/' we have 
" E. E., aged twenty-eight, duration of 
insanity six years, auditory hallucinations. 
She has communications with divine person- 
ages and delusions of grandeur." (Compare 
this with the claims made by certain Spirit- 
uaHsts to hear angels' voices and to be on 
talking terms with the spirits of such 
eminents as Milton, Shakespeare, Charles 
Dickens, etc.) 

Again, opposite Plate III. and under 
heading of " MelanchoHa Attonita," we 
have " C. C, aged thirty-seven, auditory 
hallucinations. She hears voices com- 
manding her not to eat." (Compare with 
certain of the alleged spirit commands of 
a similar nature, to which I have already 
referred.) Again, opposite Plate VII. and 
under heading of " Dementia," we read 
'' A. W., aged forty-four. She has had 
visual hallucinations, and has heard voices 
which told her to destroy herself." (Com- 
pare with some of the cases of suicide I 



122 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

have quoted as coming within my own 
cognisance.) The author does not say any 
of the trio were Spirituahsts or lost their 
reason through attending seances, but it is 
a significant fact that the hallucinations of 
which they were the victims tally exactly 
with certain of the phenomena Spiritualists 
claim as hailing from the spirit world. 

That my remarks are based on a very 
solid foundation will, I think, appear 
perfectly evident when I quote the views of 
Thomas Massie, M.B., as expressed in a 
letter published by the Sunday Times, 
9th September, 1917. After stating that 
for twenty years he has been engaged in 
the task of " investigating the mental con- 
dition of some two thousand five hundred 
alleged lunatics," he goes on to say that 
from such people he has heard many state- 
ments assuring him of the presence of spirit 
forms, such as were described by a lady, 
styling herself " an investigator of Spirit- 
ualism," and claiming to possess the powers 
both of clairvoyance and clairaudience, in 
the Sunday Times for 2nd September, 
1917. '* I have never had," he continues, 
" any hesitation in certifying such persons 
as fit for asylum treatment. Neither the 



ITS EFFECT ON HEALTH 123 

Superintendent of the Asylums nor the 
Commissioners on Lunacy have ever ques- 
tioned my certificates, and in my experience 
the justices have never had any hesitation 
in signing reception orders for such 
persons/' Dr Massie received substantial 
corroboration of what he wrote in a letter 
published in the Sunday Times on 30th 
September, 1917, in which the correspon- 
dent, Mr G. Stuart Ogilvie, said: "Mr 
Massie deals with the evidence very effec- 
tively, and as a county magistrate with over 
a quarter of a century's experience in 
certifying patients for our pubHc lunatic 
asylums, I can endorse the truth of every 
word this professional gentleman writes." 
He goes on to remark further on in the 
same letter, " The basic facts remain that 
Spiritualism is as old as humanity, and that 
credulity is the converse of faith. The 
effect upon the weak-minded and the neuro- 
pathetic — especially in times of great mental 
and physical strain — has invariably been 
the same in all periods. The cult revives, 
impostors flourish, insanity increases, and 
the sum-total of the national will-power is, 
pro tanto, decreased." 

Still another medical opinion taken from 



124 MENACE OF SPIEITUALISM 

the same source. In a letter published in 
the Sunday Times on 4th November, 1917, 
L. A. Weatherby, M.D., wrote: ''Can Sir 
OUver Lodge or anyone who declares that 
conversations have taken place between the 
dead and themselves inform me of a single 
instance in which any real and important 
communications have been made? . . . 
Has, in fact, any single instance of some 
important information ever been made from 
that other world." And continuing, he 
observes, "Have these believers in Spirit- 
ualistic manifestations ever visited institu- 
tions for the insane, and watched those 
afflicted with hallucinations of hearing and 
sight, heard their remarkable conversation 
with these unseen speakers, and noticed the 
effect some of these insane sense deceptions 
have given rise to? " 

I will now quote from a work entitled 
" On Unsoundness of Mind in its Legal and 
Medical Considerations," written by J. W. 
Hume Williams, of the Middle Temple, 
Barrister-at-Law (published in 1890 by 
WilHam Clowes & Sons, Fleet Street, 
London). On page 66, for example, the 
author observes — " A phase of mental 
disturbance, as evinced in public credulity, 



ITS EFFECT ON HEALTH 125 

has within the last thirty years become more 
particularly developed. ' Spirituahsm ' has 
had crowds of converts; professors of its 
art and mystery thriving on the ignorant 
susceptibilities of the multitude, to the great 
disquiet of weak-minded behevers in the 
supernatural. The action and reaction of 
psychic force evoking nervous sympathies 
in excitable temperaments, has, in many, 
produced hysterical cataleptic results, 
appreciable by the physician, but to the 
uninformed full of mystery." 

The hysterical condition thus brought 
about is then, according to Mr Hume, the 
true explanation of the majority, at least, 
of so-called Spiritualistic trances. Far from 
being under the control of any exterior 
spirit force the trance medium is merely 
the victim of an abnormal condition of the 
mind, ' a condition into which she has 
unconsciously worked herself. 

This type of mediumship is, in fact, 
wholly self-induced, wholly dependent on 
a supreme straining and irritation of the 
entire nervous system, which results in a 
temporary complete suspension of the 
locomotor faculties. I refer, of course, 
only to the mediumship in connection with 



126 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

which there is no dehberate fraud on the 
part of the medium, who, when honest, no 
doubt does think she is handing over her 
body to the control of some attending spirit. 
Mr Hume obviously agrees with me that the 
generality of people attracted by Spiritual- 
ism are either abnormal or weak-minded, 
or that they eventually become so, once 
having adopted that cult. 

A point that is made much of by 
Spiritualists in dealing with this question of 
trance mediumship is that of the alleged 
talking in strange voices and unknown 
tongues. " It's all very well," they 
exclaim, " for Mr Hume tries to explain 
trances by declaring them to be the result 
of hysterical catalepsy; but how could he 
or anyone else possibly account for a trance 
in which the subject suddenly begins to 
talk in a very different voice from their 
natural voice, and often in a language that 
we are certain is unknown to them when 
they are not under control? How can you 
explain this, saving by some outside spirit 
influence?" Well, I beheve there is the 
possibility of obsession, i.e., of some con- 
taminating spirit influence getting tem- 
porary control over people and utilising 



ITS EFFECT ON HEALTH 127 

them for evil purposes. I think that such 
a phenomenon might happen, but that it is 
very exceptional, simply because I do not 
believe present-day mediums are in posses- 
sion of such secrets as were, in all prob- 
ability, known to the necromancers and 
witches of olden times. I believe most of 
the so-called spirit trances of to-day are 
either wholly fakes, or else can be explained 
by some such natural causes as Mr Hume 
suggests. It must be remembered that most 
of the people who visit mediums are not alto- 
gether normal, or well-balanced (because, 
as I have already said, mysticism has pecu- 
liar attractions for such people) and that 
they go to seances with minds so prejudiced 
in favour of believing, and anxious to 
believe, that it has only to be suggested to 
them that the voices they hear are those 
of their dead friends, when they will at 
once fall in with the idea and actually 
identify the voices. Someone suggests, too, 
that the medium is speaking in some foreign 
tongue — a tongue that is declared to be 
quite unknown to the medium when the 
latter is not under control (though no one 
is in a position to vouch for the truth of 
this but the medium herself), and those 



128 MENACE OF SPIEITUALISM 

present will at once concur and declare the 
language to be Arabic, Chinese, or what 
not, there being no one at hand sufficiently 
expert (or bold enough) to refute their 
statement. It also happens sometimes, I 
believe, that the medium, having worked 
herself into a cataleptic condition, is quite 
silent, but is by those present declared still 
to be speaking. Indeed, there is no limit 
to the part suggestion and imagination 
play on such occasions, as anyone who has 
been present at a table-turning seance and 
heard the very slight creaks at once 
exaggerated into " loud raps " will know. 
In a book I have before me, and 
which is entitled " Text Book on Mental 
Diseases,"^ the author, Theodore H. 
Kellog, A.M., M.D., late medical super- 
intendent of Willard State Hospital and 
former physician-in-chief of New York City 
Asylum for the Insane, writes at great 
length on hallucinations, both auditory and 
visual, and although he does not actually 
allude to them in connection with Spiritual- 
ism, I cannot help remarking upon the very 
great similarity between the phenomena he 
attributes to patients, suffering from mental 

1 Published in London, 1897, by J. and A, Churchill. 



ITS EFFECT ON HEALTH 129 

aberration, and the phenomena claimed by 
Spiritualists. 

Let me quote a few extracts from his 
work by way of illustration. On page 154 
we find these lines : 

'' Auditory hallucinations may simulate 
the voices of friends or strangers, and they 
may speak in foreign tongues, and may 
also issue from animate and inanimate 
things, and represent every conceivable 
sound known to the patient, or even new 
strange combinations of sounds"; 

and such observations will appear all the 
more significant, if one recalls the many 
occasions upon which SpirituaHsts at a 
seance declare they hear voices, and the 
voices are heard by no one else. In the 
case of spontaneous spirit appearances in 
haunted houses, I believe, the phenomena, 
whether auditory or visual, are frequently 
witnessed by a number of people assembled 
together (though, in some cases, it is true, 
they are witnessed only by individuals 
separately) ; whereas the phenomena alleged 
to be seen or heard at seances are usually 
experienced only by the medium, or, at 
the most, by one or two of the sitters, 

I 



130 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

and those who see the same phenomenon 
seldom give the same description of it. 
Many times I have heard, at a seance, one 
person declare that they heard rappings, or 
spirit voices, or that they saw blue lights, 
when no one else could hear or see any- 
thing; and, on remonstrating, I have been 
told that I was not psychic. This has 
amused me vastly, since I have had more 
corroborated experiences with spontaneous 
phenomena in houses well known to be 
haunted than most people. 

But to continue. Let us see what Dr 
Kellog has to say with regard to suggestion, 
which, as I have stated, figures so largely 
at all stances. 

'* Sensitive hallucinatory patients," he 
observes, *' are influenced by their reading 
and by conversation, and it is possible in 
this way to have hallucinations by direct 
suggestion." 

Now it is by direct suggestion, I believe 
— when there is no actual fraud — that 
certain people are persuaded at seances 
that they see and hear phenomena. The 
medium professes to see some luminous 
figure (or figures, for she usually sees dozens 
of them) hovering behind someone's chair. 



ITS EFFECT ON HEALTH 131 

and immediately one or other of the sitters 
cries out that they see a flame, or a hand, 
or an ethereal something. At the same 
time they exhibit none of the terror one 
would naturally expect them to experience, 
were they really confronted by a genuine 
phantasm. 

Let us now revert to what Dr Kellog has 
to say further on the subject of visual 
hallucinations, and apply his remarks to 
such phenomena as those Spiritualists who 
call themselves clairvoyants claim to expe- 
rience at Spiritualistic meetings in alleged 
trances and in crystals. 

'' Visual hallucinations,*' he states, " may 
have definite or indefinite proportions ; they 
may seem as on a flat surface or eohd 
and rounded; they may have changing or 
fixed outlines, and advance or recede, or 
move across the field of vision; they may 
be colourless or have various prismatic 
tints; they may be larger or smaller than 
life; they may be single or multiple; and 
they may even be of panoramic character." 

In short, they may cover an immense 
range, and embrace every kind of object or 
scene that Spiritualists declare are purely 
spiritual. Those isuffering from medically 



132 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

attested hallucinations are just as emphati- 
cally sure that they actually see the celestial 
visions they think they see, as are Spirit- 
ualists, the only difference being that the 
latter superciliously claim their visions to 
be the result of the so-called psychic faculty, 
whereas the latter — the certified lunatics — 
do not claim anything of the kind, but 
regard them naturally, without any conceit 
or affectation whatsoever. Dr Kellog's 
remarks are singularly applicable to the 
spirit faces, stated to be seen at seances 
where materialisation is alleged to take 
place, though it must be borne in mind that 
these faces have not infrequently been 
proved to be a fake on the part of the 
medium or an accomplice. 

'' The mask-like hallucination," Dr 
Kellog says (p. 157), *' is very real and 
leads patients to believe that their acquain- 
tances change their features frequently." 
How often have trance mediums been 
declared to have had their countenances 
suddenly metamorphosed into the faces of 
those whose messages they profess to 
deliver. 

Let us go on to see what further Dr 
Kellog has to say with regard to the same 



ITS EFFECT ON HEALTH 135 

subject. On page 157 we read, "Visual 
hallucinations are common in the acute 
stages of mental disorder, and in general 
paresis, and they are more frequent during 
the vital reduction of the night season than 
in the daytime." 

It will be noticed that most seances 
are held in the dark, and that darkness 
is declared by Spiritualists — particularly 
mediums — to be essential for spirit material- 
isation (this, by the way, is not at all the 
case with spontaneous ghostly phenomena 
in haunted houses, which can manifest 
themselves at all times). Darkness, accord- 
ing to Dr Kellog and other medical experts, 
also specially favours visual hallucination, 
so that I think we can safely assume that 
many of the so-called spirit phenomena 
declared to be seen at seances are, in 
reality, nothing more nor less than visual 
hallucinations experienced by people with 
some rapidly developing mental or physical 
defect. For instance, Dr Kellog informs 
us (p. 157) that visual hallucinations are 
not uncommon in eye diseases. Might it 
not, therefore, be perfectly feasible that a 
certain percentage of those people who see 
these so-called spirit manifestations, to 



1S4 MENACE OF SPIEITUALISM 

order, have some peculiar optical deficiency 
or disease, such as is frequently to be met 
with in people who are quite out of the 
normal — and it is these abnormal persons, 
I repeat, whom Spiritualism particularly 
attracts and caters for. Another form of 
visual hallucination, this brain speciahst 
tells us (p. 157), is ** the aura of the 
epileptic." Epileptics see auras, so do 
other people who claim to be clairvoyants 
— no one else does. Now as I have pre- 
viously remarked — a statement that I fancy 
there would be Httle difficulty in corrobor- 
ating — people attending seances have not 
infrequently been seized with epileptic fits, 
so that the excitement of anticipating 
phenomena either generated epilepsy, or 
else the victims had been subject to the 
seizures previously; in either case, there 
can be no question that the e:Eect of 
attendance at such exhibitions was very 
injurious, which would hardly be the case 
if the spirits alleged to be present were 
good ones. 

One more reference to Dr Kellog, and 
then I will pass on to some other authority. 
On page 173 (I quote from the same work), 
he says, " Hysterical and hypochondriacal 



ITS EFFECT ON HEALTH 15.5 

patients indulge in fantastic reveries, and 
paranoiacs have a sort of a dream-life for 
months together, and the outcome in chronic 
mania is a steady play of fantasy, and the 
senile dement reverts to a childish action of 
fantasy." Let us compare this with the 
statements of psychics, who tell us that they 
have often visited the highest spiritual 
planes and wandered through lovely, sunny 
meadows in company with angels, and that 
they have been shown panoramic views of 
such dazzling beauty and radiance as no 
mortal eyes ever looked upon before. Such 
vauntings are very common, and are usually 
found to emanate from the older ranks of 
Spiritualists — people almost, if not quite, in 
their dotage. We may, therefore, put two 
and two together. 

Another work I have at hand is one by 
Bernard Hart, M.D. (London), entitled 
"The Psychology of Insanity/' and 
published by the Cambridge University 
Press, 1912. 

In this work Dr Hart makes some very 
interesting remarks on the subject of auto- 
matic writing, to which many Spiritualists 
— especially those who are also members of 
the Psychical Eesearch Society — attach so 
much importance. 



136 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

Now I am quite ready to believe that 
certain of the communications one does 
receive in writing of this description are 
due to spirit agency, but I think when that 
happens the writing comes to us more or 
less spontaneously; I do not consider it at 
all probable that it can be forced, or made 
to respond to the invitation of people who 
are out purely for sordid motives, as is the 
case with professional mediums. I think 
that when one sits constantly and forces the 
mind into that state of blank Spiritualists 
deem necessary in order to obtain results, 
one renders oneself hable to at least two 
very serious dangers. First of all, there is 
the off-chance of some genuine inhabitant 
of a very undesirable spirit world coming 
along and obtaining an influence over us, 
that would certainly not be to our moral 
advantage; and, secondly, there is the 
extreme probability of our minds gradually 
becoming weaker, and our whole health 
suffering in consequence. 

To such of us who are in full possession 
of our mental and bodily vigour such 
constant practices would be distinctly 
injurious, but to those of us who are 
naturally of rather weak intellect, hys- 



ITS EFFECT ON HEALTH 137 

terical, or in any way abnormal, the gravest 
results might readily ensue. Let us now 
see what Dr Hart has to say on this subject. 
In "The Psychology of Insanity'' 
(p. 43), we find, '* Let us take for example 
the phenomenon of automatic writing. This 
curious condition, although occasionally 
exhibited by comparatively normal people, 
attains its most perfect development in the 
form of mental disorder known as hysteria." 
Dr Hart goes on to say that " if we engage 
an hysterical patient in conversation,'' and 
while his mind is apparently wholly occupied 
talking to us, slip a pencil into his hand, 
he will, if some third person begins to 
whisper questions in his ear, write answers 
to them, being at the same time totally 
ignorant of what his hand is doing, and of 
the events he is describing. Occasionally, 
Dr Hart says, these events narrate to past 
episodes in the patient's life, which he has 
long forgotten. Here, then, is surely a 
quite feasible explanation for people sud- 
denly developing some alleged new faculty, 
such as drawing, painting, or playing on 
the piano under assumed spirit control. A 
suggestion has been made, possibly in 
conversation or in some sound (someone 



1^8 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

has sung a certain air, or played a certain 
strain), or possibly the suggestion may have 
been conveyed in a peculiar scent, or in 
some atmospheric condition; at all events, 
it has come, and the recipient's memory is 
at once awakened; maybe they are taken 
back years, and a faculty long allowed to 
He dormant is suddenly resuscitated. Such 
an occurrence would be all the more likely 
if the subject were addicted to hysteria. 
Dr Hart thinks this a positive explanation 
for automatic writing, at least, for on the 
next page (of the same work) he remarks : 

' ' Automatic writing has played a large 
part in the history of Spirituahsm, and has 
been attributed by supporters of that 
doctrine to the activity of some spiritual 
being who avails himself of the patient's 
hand in order to manifest to the world his 
desires and opinions. There is no need, 
however, to resort to fantastic hypotheses 
of this type, and the explanation of the 
phenomenon is comparatively simple." 

He then proceeds to give a very detailed 
but lucid description of the mental process 
which brings about the phenomenon, and 
it is thus perfectly well accounted for on 
natural grounds. Before quitting this 



ITS EFFECT ON HEALTH 139 

subject of hysteria, I should hke to draw 
attention to certain statements which 
appear in a work (p. 538-9) entitled 
** Nervous and Mental Diseases/' by 
Archibald Church, M.D., and Frederick 
Peterson, M.D. (pubhshed in London, 
1899, by the Eebman PubHshing Co., Ltd.). 
They are : " It (hysteria) was often at the 
bottom of the demoniacal ' possessions ' of 
the Middle Ages, and furnished some of 
the martyrs of witchcraft and religious 
fanaticism." . . . '' The studies of Charcot 
and his students have placed hysteria upon 
a firm chnical basis, and enabled nearly all 
its manifestations to be traced to disturb- 
ances in the psychic sphere or in its 
substrata " — and referring again to hysteria 
*' Heredity plays an important part." 

These statements merely confirm what I 
have already suggested, namely, that a 
certain proportion, at least, of trance 
mediumship and cases in which the medium 
actually speaks (either making use of some 
tongue declared by those present to be 
unknown to her, when in possession of her 
customary faculties, or when she adopts 
a voice at once assumed to come from 
another world) can be accounted for by 



140 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

hysteria, a theory that will be seen to be 
still further strengthened by the fact that 
so-called mediumship is often said to run 
in families. 

Another work from which I should like 
to quote is that entitled, " Spiritism and 
Insanity,'' by Dr Marcel Viollet, Physician 
to the Lunatic Asylums, Paris (published, 
1910, by Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 
London). 

" Spontaneous somnambuhsm," Dr 
Viollet writes (p. 11), " is particularly 
easily brought on with certain neuropathic 
patients. Because of this these persons 
fill an important role in Spiritistic drawing- 
rooms where hypnotism is practised. They 
-^ become subjects nj__the_ hands of the 

mediums, reahsing experiments analogous 
to those of extra-lucid somnambuhsts ; or 
they reveal themselves spontaneously as 
writing, or speaking, or table-telHng 
mediums." In this statement Dr Viollet 
bears out my theory that hypnotism plays 
a far more subtle and important role in 
stances than is generally imagined. I am 
quite of the opinion that a very fair 
percentage of the phenomena credited to 
mediums are, in reality, due to hypnotism, 



ITS EFFECT ON HEALTH 141 

to the fancies of neuropathic people who 
are experimented upon by mediums possess- 
ing the power to hypnotise. Dr Viollet 
continuing, says, " The predisposition to 
neuropathic accidents, commonly called 
'hysteria,' manifests itself during the 
seance, and the organisers of Spiritistic 
seances know well these attacks, so much 
do they fear them.'' (See " La Survie," 
by Mme. Noeggerath, Librarie Spirite, 
42 Eue St Jacques, Paris.) And again, 
" Further, these neuropathic persons have 
a particular character made up of a certain 
instability in thoughts, opinions, projects, 
the itch of lying, and the desire, sometimes 
conscious but more often unconscious, of 
drawing attention to themselves." **In 
addition to these rather aggressive and 
mihtant neuropathies we have at seances," 
so Dr Viollet informs us, ** the ' para- 
noiacs ' rarely consenting to drop their 
incognito which their pride considers a 
pedestal and their susceptibility a shield "; 
also " the feeble, armed with implicit faith, 
following the movement like sheep ever 
ready to follow their leader," and again 
we read (p. 12-13), *' hidden in the 
shadows, sit the sad, the timid, the scrupu- 



142 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

lous, motionless and dumb, with morbid 
melancholia at their elbows, or crouching 
behind them, ever ready to pounce upon 
them. . . . Here they are, these predis- 
posed, over whom dark-browed insanity has 
cast its tentacle ; they are here in the rooms 
of Spiritism — come here to intoxicate them- 
selves with mystery as with a poison." 

These views are quite in keeping with 
the impressions I myself have received at 
stances and other Spiritualistic meetings, 
and, though not flattering, they appear to 
be, at all events, honest. Referring to the 
same performances, Dr Viollet says, •' Some 
bring their progressive insanity, others their 
senile intellectual decay. (N.B. — I have 
said that Spiritualism usually attracts the 
old, seldom the young.) The Spiritistic 
idea takes quick root in this sickly soil, 
where dehrium is crouching low, delirium 
which will be Swayed by Spiritistic pre- 
occupations." He becomes even less 
guarded as he goes on, and speaks with a 
candour, which, though somewhat uncon- 
ventional, is quite excusable in a foreigner, 
as foreigners, particularly Frenchmen, do 
not see the necessity of being delicate when 
fef erring to glaring evils. ** Others," Dr 



ITS EFFECT ON HEALTH 143 

Viollet observes, still referring to the 
habitues of stances, " intoxicated by 
various causes, alcohol, morphine, hashish, 
cocaine, ether, will, through their favourite 
poison, have their attack of dehrium, but 
as they are convinced Spiritists, their 
ravings will take their colour from Spiritism, 
they will be hunted down and persecuted 
by the imaginary disincarnated." 

From these extracts one can, I think, 
form a fairly correct idea of Dr Viollet 's 
opinions with regard to seances. I can 
only add that should anyone still lack the 
conviction that Dr Viollet has sufficient 
grounds for these opinions, his doubts 
would be immediately dispelled were he to 
read Dr Viollet' s book. 

I have now, with one exception, ex- 
hausted the quotations I intended making 
use of for the purpose of illustrating ' ' The 
Dangers of Spiritualism " from the health 
point of view, but I think enough has been 
said to make it evident to all but the 
extremely partial and prejudiced, firstly, 
that SpirituaHsm, with all it comprehends, 
namely, continually sitting in the dark or 
semi-dark, in a state of nervous tension, 
and straining the sight, hearing, and heart 



144 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

almost to bursting-point — constantly trying 
to force on an unnatural condition of trance 
— peering for hours at a time into a crystal, 
and always fancying one is hearing spirit 
sounds or seeing spiritual phenomena^ — is 
not only injurious to the health of the 
strongest, but absolutely fatal to the health 
of that class of people it especially caters 
for, and invariably entangles in its meshes, 
i.e., the abnormal, epileptic, hysterical, 
and weak-minded; and, secondly, that the 
majority, at all events, of the phenomena 
Spiritualists declare to be due to super- 
physical agency can be shown by medical 
men to be due chiefly to hysteria, and 
epilepsy, as well as to other physical and 
mental diseases of a similar nature. 

The following quotation I have held over 
until now, as it makes, I think, a fitting 
conclusion to this chapter. It is taken 
from the oft-times referred to Report of Dr 
G. M. Robertson, Superintendent of the 
Royal Asylum of Morningside, Edinburgh. 

** I feel it necessary at this time, as the 
result of several cases that have come under 
my care, to utter a note of warning to those 
who are seeking consolation in their sorrows 
by practical experiments in the domain of 



ITS EFFECT ON HEALTH 145 

Spiritualism. ... I would remind inquirers 
i'nto the subject that if they would meet 
those who are hearing messages from 
spirits every hour of the day, who are seeing 
forms, angelic and human, surrounding 
them, that are invisible to ordinary persons, 
and who are receiving other manifestations 
of an equally occult nature, they only 
require to go to a mental hospital to find 
them. ... I desire to warn those who may 
possibly inherit a latent tending to nervous 
disorders to have nothing to do with prac- 
tical inquiries of a Spiritualistic nature, lest 
they should awaken this dormant proclivity 
to hallucinations within their brains.*' 



K 



CHAPTER VI 

THE DANGER OF FRAUD OF ALL KINDS 
AT SEANCES 

I NOW come to another danger which faces 
those who adopt the cult of Spiritualism 
and take up seances at every turn, and that 
is the danger of being tricked. I believe 
that for one medium who does at times 
conscientiously endeavour to get in touch 
with bond fide spirits of the dead, there 
are ninety-nine who never make such an 
attempt, but wholly rely on their powers 
of deception, in order to rake in the shekels, 
which is the goal of all mediumship. I 
will deal with the table-tilting medium first. 
Now I am neither a conjurer nor a scientist, 
so that I must regard the question purely 
from the view-point of the looker-on, the 
person possessed with the average amount, 
perhaps, of observation and common sense. 
To begin with, I have been to innumerable 
stances, some of them conducted by 
146 



THE DANGER OF FRAUD 147 

mediums, who have lately acquired con- 
siderable notoriety through the ' ' backing ' ' 
of several eminent professors of physics, 
and I have never yet been convinced that 
anything that has taken place when any of 
these scientific psychics have been present 
has in any way been due to bond fide 
spirit intervention. It is so easy to make 
a table, of the weight and dimensions of 
those usually used on such occasions, tilt. 
Try it for yourself, and you will find that 
a very little downward pressure with the 
tips of your fingers will cause the side 
opposite you to rise. I have frequently 
watched the fingers, arms, and mouth (the 
mouth is a very sure indicator) of mediums 
when they have been at the table, and 
I have often seen unmistakable signs 
there of pressure being used, a pressure 
which can, as a rule, be exerted with 
impunity, since mediums generally prefer 
to hold their seances in the dark, pretend- 
ing that such a condition is very helpful, 
if not actually essential to spirit communica- 
tion. Neither they nor their patrons, the 
SpirituaHstic chemists, however, can explain 
why it is that spirits, when they materialise 
spontaneously in haunted localities, do so 



148 MENACE OF SPIEITUALISM 

very frequently in broad daylight. The 
legs of mediums should be watched, too, 
for I have heard of instances, when so-called 
spirit knocks have been produced by very 
material toes and knees. Tapping can very 
easily be manipulated by pressing on the 
table in such a manner that it gives little 
creaking noises that the medium knows well 
will at once be exaggerated by some of the 
sitters into taps or raps. As for the table 
running round the room, there is no doubt 
whatever but that when the medium, or, 
perhaps, an accomplice, has once given an 
impetus to the table, certain of the sitters 
become so excited that they unconsciously 
assist in the movement, their exertions 
passing unnoticed in the general hubbub 
and excitement. I believe it is sometimes 
claimed that tables have occasionally risen 
right off the ground, but I have never been 
present at such an occasion; all the same, 
I have seen equally apparently inexphcable 
feats accomplished by professional con- 
jurers, and believe that Mr Nevil Maskelyne, 
or any other expert who is well versed in 
the theory of magic, could very easily 
account for the so-called phenomenon on 
perfectly natural grounds. 



THE DANGEE OF FRAUD 149 

I would here once again remark how 
utterly footling it is for Spiritualists to 
attempt to bolster up the phenomenal side 
of their cause, by asserting that the demon- 
strations given by such and such a medium 
must be genuine because Sir Oliver Lodge, 
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, or Sir Somebody 
else — please note well it is nearly always 
a sir — no one gauges the snobbishness of 
the average B.P. better than these Spirit- 
ualists — guarantee that they are genuine. 
Why should Sir Ohver Lodge or Sir A. C. 
Doyle be better able to tell whether a 
medium tricks or not, than any ordin- 
arily observant bank manager, butcher 
or bootblack? The chemical laboratory is 
a poor training school for the study of 
human nature and common or garden 
trickery, and the writings of and recent 
addresses given by Sir A. 0. Doyle suggest 
very strongly that he has always been 
prejudiced in favour of Spiritualism, and 
extremely partial to its devotees. No, the 
people most capable of judging the per- 
formances of mediums are professional 
experts in conjuring, and absolutely un- 
biased men and women of the world, who 
have continually rubbed shoulders with all 



150 MENACE OF SPIEITUALISM 

kinds and conditions, and know something 
about humanity when it is very subtle and 
plausible, and desperately anxious to make 
money. 

To revert to the table. When the room 
is dark, anything of course may happen, 
for you can never trust anyone. The 
temptation to make something happen — just 
a creak, or a tilt, or any little movement — 
anything to relieve the monotony, and 
make the pulses throb a trifle faster, is too 
great to be resisted, especially if there are 
women present. My experience points to 
the fact that w^omen are far more unscrupu- 
lous in these matters than men. Now, with 
regard to the messages. I cannot say that 
anything I read in the much-advertised 
'* Eaymond " impressed me in the shghtest. 
Indeed, it left me astonishingly cold, since 
from the many allusions I had heard in 
private and seen pubhshed in the news- 
papers, to what Sir Oliver Lodge was 
supposed to have discovered concerning 
another life, I had certainly been led to 
expect something, to say the least of it, 
very much more to the point. 

Of course every professional medium in 
London knows all about Sir Oliver Lodge; 



THE DANGER OF FRAUD 151 

they make a point of knowing the private 
history of all those who will, in all prob- 
abihty, one day visit them. That is part 
of their stock-in-trade, and can be very 
easily accompHshed. Club mates, friends, 
servants can always be got at in some 
manner or another. Clever women can 
ferret out anything (they make excellent 
detectives), so that it is not at all surprising 
that when Sir 0. Lodge attends a table 
seance, messages at once come through for 
him and allude to something he fondly 
imagines is know^n only to his family circle. 
Flukes, too, go a long way. Sir Oliver is 
apparently immensely impressed because a 
medium occasionally tells him something 
quite true; one would like to know how 
many times the mediums in whom he 
obviously places implicit trust miss the 
mark altogether. We hear much of their 
successes but very httle of their failures, 
and I know from my own and other people's 
experiences that the failures of mediums 
very far outnumber their so-called suc- 
cesses. In my opinion, when they do 
happen to strike a winner, it is almost 
invariably either by chance, or by an 
inference relating to some little piece of 



152 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

information they have succeeded in obtain- 
ing beforehand. I can see nothing in 
" Raymond " to convince me to the 
contrary, and my opinion is strengthened 
by the piffling natm^e of certain of the 
messages which are scandalously attributed 
to a spirit of the dead. Death is a serious 
ordeal, there can be no doubt whatsoever 
on that score. No one who Eas ever 
beheld a sane person dying has seen them 
give way to flippancy and laughter at the 
moment of passing away. They have never 
died regarding death as a mere matter for 
jest, and this being so, provided there is 
such a thing as memory in the other world, 
it is more than hkely that the spirit mind 
would have been so deeply affected by all 
it had gone through, that far from being 
hilarious, it would undoubtedly be most 
solemn and reflective. I can recollect no 
instance — and my experience, as I can very 
easily prove, has been a fairly large one — 
of any spirit that has returned spon- 
taneously, i.e., without the intervention of 
a medium, ever appearing in the least 
degree mirthful, or inspiring anyone with 
feelings other than of fear, awe, or venera- 
tion; nor has there ever been, in such 



THE DANGEE OF FEAUD 153 

visitations, anything to indicate that the 
other world is in any degree frivolous 
or the least bit like that described in Sir 
Oliver Lodge's book. 

In my opinion, the future life which Sir 
Oliver Lodge portrays in " Eaymond " — a 
life of cigarettes, whiskies-and-sodas, and 
absurdly constituted garments — is not only 
an utter contradiction to that depicted in 
the Bible and sacred Uterature of all 
estabhshed old-w^orld rehgions; it is also 
a complete repudiation of an idea of hfe 
beyond the grave as conveyed to us by 
the whole history of ghostdom. Sir Oliver 
Lodge attributes this description to the 
spirit of one who was very precious to him, 
but, in my opinion again, such a descrip- 
tion could only have emanated from some 
mischievous, impersonating spirit that was 
never of our flesh and blood, or could 
only have owed its origin (a theory which, 
I think, is far more probable) to the 
imagination of an enterprising and quick- 
witted medium. Have you noticed at table 
seances where you are thoroughly satisfied 
that the medium cannot really know any- 
thing whatsoever about the sitters, that 
you never get anything quite distinctive, 



164 MENACE OF SPIEITUALISM 

anything, for example, that might not 
apply equally well to everyone else in the 
room. For example, a message comes 
through for " K. B.," and the medium at 
once asks if there is a " K. B." present, 
or if anyone present knows or once knew a 
'*K. B/' Now the initials ''K. B." are 
fairly common; most of us have met, at 
some time or another, a Katie Brown, or 
some other Katie B., since there are dozens 
of surnames beginning with B. The 
medium is thus on fairly safe ground; nor 
do her surmises fail, for someone, perhaps 
more than one person present, at once 
claims knowledge of a K. B. who, they 
state, passed over some years ago. All is 
now, of course, comparatively plain sailing, 
and a message is at once tilted out of the 
usual non-committal order, as, for instance, 
" K. B." says she is very happy, and is 
particularly anxious no one still alive should 
continue to mourn for her; or ''K. B." 
wants to warn you. (Warnings are a great 
stunt, they have just that air of mystery 
about them that is particularly fascinating. 
We do so like to be important — to feel that 
we are of so much account that we can 
incur someone's bitter animosity or jealousy. 



THE DANGER OF FRAUD 155 

Life, as mediums know only too well, would 
hot be worth living were it not for these 
vile yet elusive snakes in the grass who are 
eternally plotting our downfall.) Hence, 
when " K. B." announces her desire to 
warn, everyone is at once thrilled, and the 
lucky individual for whom the message is 
intended feels a hero or heroine, as the 
case may be, on the spot. " Do you know 
anyone likely to wish you ill? " asks the 
medium. There is a momentary pause, 
and then a slow and very emphatic '* yes." 
' ' A woman ? ' ' the medium continues 
knowingly. Again a slow '' yes." (Who 
doesn't know a woman who wishes them 
ill? Most of us know a good many.) 
** Then," the medium says, with the most 
impressive air of conviction, '' mark my 
words, it is about that woman the table 
wishes to warn you. Is it not so?" and 
to everyone's unfeigned satisfaction the 
table tilts out '' yes." The recipient then 
wants to know who the woman is, and 
the reply that comes is either, " A fair 
lady," or, "A middle-aged lady," or, 
'' M. H.," or some other equally ordinary 
initials, but never anything very specific. 
''Can't you give the surname," the 



156 MENACE OF SPIEITUALISM 

recipient inquires, but the table only 
responds with Mary or Molly. " Don't you 
know a Mary or Molly H.? " the medium 
asks, and the recipient says, " Yes, 
several" (for of course all of us have at 
one time or another met a Mary Harrison 
or a Molly Hill). " Then you may depend 
it's one of them ' K. B.' wishes to warn 
you against," the medium observes; and 
after a little more conversation the person 
for whom the messages profess to come, 
lets out that she or he certainly does know 
a Molly Hill with whom they are not on 
very friendly terms. " Is it Molly Hill? " 
the medium at once asks of the table, and 
the reply, of course, is " yes." 

''There now," the medium exclaims 
triumphantly, " I knew ' K. B.' had some- 
thing very important to communicate to 
you. I felt it all along. It was to put you 
on your guard against Molly Hill." Then, 
turning to the table, she inquires, " Is 
there anything further you wish to say? " 
and the table very conveniently tilts out 
"no," and some other spirit shortly after- 
wards declares itself to be present. And 
so on and on ad infinitum, — always the same 
"fit-easy" type of questions and always 



THE DANGEE OF FEAUD 157 

the same fit-easy type of answers — answers 
that are invariably aided by information the 
medium manages to extract adroitly from 
one or other of the sitters. It is a signifi- 
cant fact that, despite the nmnbers of very 
clever people who have passed over, and 
w^ho would, according to the Spirituahstic 
theory of evolution and progression, still go 
on endeavouring to improve their minds, 
no information that has been of the slightest 
value to scientific or medical research has 
ever been obtained, either through the 
table or through any other mediumistic 
agency. All the messages so far have 
been either trite, vulgar, blasphemous, 
libellous, or silly and sentimental. Far 
from evolving mentally, the spirits of even 
the greatest of those who have passed over 
would appear to have hopelessly degener- 
ated.' As a matter of fact, however, I 
think that most of the so-called spirit 
messages delivered by the table are purely 
subjective, that is to say, they originate 
in the medium's own mind. Constant 
practice soon makes her expert in summing- 
up her clients from their personal appear- 
ance. Face and dress reveal many things; 
they are very sure givers-away. 



158 MENACE OF SPIEITUALISM 

A very few tactful and apparently quite 
innocent, lucky questions, answered unsus- 
pectingly and naturally, give the medium 
just the amount of information she requires 
for a start; for the rest she trusts to chance, 
and to any inspiration she may obtain 
through covert glances at her client, and 
from further scraps of conversation. 
Moreover, the war has made people so 
anxious to glean tidings of another world 
that they will jump at anything, however 
remote and trivial, that in any way suggests 
a possibiHty of the super-physical; and of 
this mediums are thoroughly well aware. 
They know they have only to weave even 
the barest semblance of truth into one 
of their messages, and their poor, half- 
demented clients will joyfully accept all 
that follows, convinced that it is of spirit 
origin. 

Besides, as I have said before, we always 
hear of a medium's successes, but we are 
never told of their failures; and though 
our attention is invariably demanded when- 
ever the hammer succeeds in hitting the 
nail on the head, we are left in bhssful 
ignorance of the many times the hammer 
descends and misses the mark altogether. 



THE DANGER OF FEAUD 159 

Some Spiritualists fancy they see a way 
out of this dileniina by suggesting that one 
must expect certain discrepancies in spirit 
messages, since there are unreliable, as 
well as truthful spirits, just as there are 
unreliable, as well as truthful people. It 
may be so, I admit, but I think most 
persons will agree that a much more feasible 
explanation is that there are inventive and 
lying mediums, and that the untruths, far 
from originating in another, emanate wholly 
from this world. 

However, no matter whether the fact is 
due to lying spirits or to lying mediums, 
by far the greater number of the messages 
tilted out at seances are wholly untrust- 
worthy; and, of these, many are calcu- 
lated to do a great deal of harm. Apart 
from the shock occasioned by an abrupt 
announcement that some very near relative 
is either seriously ill or dead, mischief 
of another kind is not infrequently perpe- 
trated; for instance, the most abominable 
scandals are occasionally set in circu- 
lation, jealousy and suspicion is created, 
friendships and engagements are broken off, 
and wives are set against their husbands. 
Regarding the latter, I know that such 



160 MENACE OF SPIEITUALISM 

attempts at breaking-up households have 
been repeatedly and deliberately made. As 
I have stated elsewhere, this attack on men 
is the latest stunt in mediumship, and, in 
my opinion again, it owes its origin to a 
very large extent to the more militant 
section of the Women's Eights Movement. 
Finally, seeing how often seances are 
used for sinister purposes, how little they 
can ever really benefit mankind, and, 
on the contrary, what an immeasurable 
amount of harm they can do, I cannot 
conceive how any really thoughtful and 
rational person can recommend them to 
their friends, or to anyone for whom they 
have the shghtest consideration or esteem. 
In fact, I think we cannot censure too 
strongly the various eminent scientists and 
authors who, at the present moment, are 
making use of the Press as a medium for 
propagating their belief in such a pernicious 
and dangerous cult as that of Spiritualism. 
But to revert to the origin of the messages 
received through the table. I think what 
is often accredited to spirits (besides being 
accounted for by conscious or unconscious 
trickery) might well be due to thought- 
reading, suggestion, or animal magnetism; 



THE DANGEE OF FRAUD 161 

and should there, by any chance, be a bond 
fide spirit present, it is far more Hkely to 
belong to a mischievous or evil class of 
spirit — akin to the demons in the Bible — a 
class that has never been of our flesh and 
blood — than to be the spirit of any human 
being that has passed over. I do think it 
is possible that a spirit of the dead may, on 
some rare occasion, be present at a seance, 
but, I believe, when such a spirit does come, 
it comes quite spontaneously, as it would in 
a house that is haunted, and quite irrespec- 
tive of the call of any professional medium, 
who is, by-the-bye, far more likely to keep 
this type of spirit away than to attract it. 

It may, perhaps, be of interest to note 
here what Professor Faraday had to say on 
the question of table-turning, which at 
about the time he wrote (1853), was greatly 
occupying the pubhc mind. A number of 
explanations were then volunteered as to 
the phenomena, which were popularly 
credited with taking place, among them 
being electricity, magnetism, some unknown 
and hitherto unrecognised physical power 
which affects inanimate bodies, the revolu- 
tion of the earth, and diabolical supernatural 
agency. Professor Faraday had an idea 

t 



162 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

that a quasi-involuntary muscular action 
was the real cause of the table tilting and 
moving round, and he made an experiment 
to see if his surmises were correct. What 
followed is best explained by my referring 
to page 172 of a work entitled "Popular 
Errors/' by John Timbs, F.S.A. (pubHshed 
1880, by Crosby, Lockwood & Co., London). 
The following is the extract : 

** For this purpose, he (Professor Fara- 
day) provided an apparatus with index 
attached; it consisted of two small, flat 
pieces of wood held together by indiarubber 
springs, and separated by small rollers that 
allowed the pieces of wood to move freely 
over each other. The movement of the 
upper one was shown by an index that 
pointed to the right, or to the left, according 
to the direction of the motion. This httle 
apparatus, when placed under the hands of 
a practised table-turner, had the curious 
effect of paralysing his power when he 
looked at the index, and thus became con- 
scious of the real movement of his hands; 
but when the index was concealed from 
view the table began to turn as briskly as 
if the apparatus did not intervene. This 
proved that the movement of the table was 
effected by the direct action of the muscles 
exerted involuntarily. Again, Professor 



THE DANGER OF FRAUD 163 

Faraday observes : ' The most valuable 
effect of this test apparatus is the corrective 
power it possesses over the mind of the 
table-turner. As soon as the index is placed 
before the most earnest, and they perceive 
— as in my presence they have always done 
— that it tells whether they are pressing 
downwards only, or obliquely, then all 
effects of table-turning cease, even though 
the parties persevere, earnestly desiring 
motion, till they become weary and worn 
out. No prompting or checking the hand 
is needed, the power is gone ; and this only 
because the parties are made conscious of 
what they are really doing mechanically, 
and so are unable unwittingly to deceive 
themselves." 

Of course, Professor Faraday takes a 
wholly materialistic view of the subject, 
which is possibly a little out of date, but, 
at the same time, I cannot help thinking 
that his test might prove effectual, were it 
applied to the majority of tiltings and 
turnings of the table at present-day seances, 
especially those presided over by pro- 
fessional mediums. 

In the same work we find some interest- 
ing remarks by Arago in " Meteorological 
Essays," to show that the same force 
utilised in moving tables can be imparted 



164 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

to other objects as well, and need have 
nothing to do with the super-physical. 
On page 173 we find Arago quoting 
from " The Philosophical Transactions " 
Mr Ellicot's experiments upon two pendu- 
lum clocks, enclosed in separate cases, 
suspended from a wooden plank affixed to 
the same wall, and at a distance of twenty- 
three and a half English inches from each 
other. " At first only one of these two 
clocks were going, the second clock was 
at rest. After a certain time this second 
clock was found to have been set going by 
the imperceptible vibrations transmitted to 
its pendulum from the pendulum of the first 
clock through the medium of the interven- 
ing solid bodies. A very singular circum- 
stance is that after a certain time longer, 
while the pendulum of the second clock 
(the one which had just been at rest) 
vibrated in the largest arc which the con- 
struction of the clock would permit, the 
pendulum of the first clock, the one which 
at first was the only one going, had arrived 
at a state of entire rest." Arago' s object 
was to show that there already existed in 
science instances of communication anala- 
gous to those which have been recently 



THE DANGEE OF FEAUD 165 

presented through turning tables, and of 
which the explanation does not require any 
of those mysterious influences to which 
recourse has been had in the case of the 
tables. Hence it will be seen from the 
testimony of another authority how probable 
it is that the physical is really responsible 
for the marvels that take place at table- 
turning, and how thoroughly unwise and 
even dangerous it is for people to place 
any confidence in the messages received 
through tables, messages which mediums 
and others declare come from another 
world. 

I now pass on to the subject of pro- 
fessional clairvoyancy. I once went to a 
seance in a room within a mile or so of 
Piccadilly Circus. There must have been 
about sixty people present, and it is no 
exaggeration to say that the medium, 
according to her own statements, saw quite 
as many spirits as there .were people. 
Apparently she saw one behind each chair, 
and she rattled off descriptions of them with 
as much ease and nonchalance as if she had 
been counting chickens, or checking off 
figures in an accountant's office. Surely, 
spirits of the dead must, of necessity, be 



166 MENACE OF 8PIEITUALISM 

awesome, at Ij^st such is the opinion of 
most people who have had the misfortune 
to encounter them in haunted houses — but 
the spirits of the dead, present on this 
occasion, seem to have been regarded by 
the medium with neither fear nor respect, 
for she disposed of them one after another 
with rather less ceremony than one disposes 
of old clothes. 

This is the sort of thing that happened. 
The medium standing on the platform and 
pointing energetically at a rather stout 
gentleman sitting in the centre of the 
second row : " I see a spirit standing behind 
you, sir. No, not you, but the gentleman 
with the red tie. The spirit is of medium 
height, not too fat, nor yet too thin, but 
just comfortable. It is of medium colour- 
ing, neither very fair, nor yet very dark; 
its hair is beginning to go grey. It has a 
moustache, and answers to the name of 
George. Do you know anyone of that 
name, sir? " 

Eather Stout Gentleman: ''Dozens, 
and your description might suit any one of 
them." 

Medium {rather angrily): ''Well, it's 
one of them, sir, and he is looking at you 



THE DANGER OF FRAUD 167 

very earnestly, as if he were anxious to tell 
you something." 

Rather Stout Gentleman : - Then it 
must be George Hammond. I beheve I 
once borrowed half-a-crown from him and 
he wants to remind me of it, I suppose.'' 

There is slight laughter, and the medium 
at once points at someone else. 

- ' The lady over there in the third row 
with the green ribbon on her hat. There is 
a very old lady standing behind you. She 
is resting one hand on your chair, and is 
eyeing you very affectionately. She is of 
moderate height — neither very tall nor very 
short. Rather pale, with grey hair. She 
answers to the name of Mary. Have you 
ever known any old lady of that name, 
madam? " 

Lady With Green Hat : " Several. My 
grandmother was called Mary, and two of 
my aunts also, and I have known several 
elderly ladies who were Marys. Can't you 
tell me something more definite? What is 
her surname ? ' ' 

Medium: *' She says she can't stay, 
madam, that something is calling her 
away, but that she will visit you again 
later." 



168 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

Lady With Green Hat: ''But her 
surname? " 

The medium, taking no notice, turns to 
someone else and at once begins to describe 
another spirit, this time — answering to the 
name of WilUam. And so the fiasco con- 
tinues. Sometimes there is an emphatic 
deniaL The person behind whom a spirit 
is alleged to stand declares he or she has 
never known anyone with such a name, 
whereupon the medium, who is doubtless 
well prepared for such an emergency, at 
once announces that it (the spirit) is meant 
for someone else and has mistaken the chair. 

Who can believe that such rubbish as 
this could possibly have anything to do 
with the spirit world? 

And yet seances of this type are far from 
uncommon; you can often see them adver- 
tised. Most mediums prefer, however, to 
give their clients a private sitting, for a 
twofold reason. Firstly, because there is 
more money in it — the charges for private 
sittings often run into pounds ; and secondly, 
because there is less chance of interruption. 
The modus operandi is more or less the 
same. Generally several spirits are seen, 
and their description is so vague that it 






THE DANGER OF FRAUD 169 

is bound to fit in with someone. More- 
over, the medium can always count on 
receiving no inconsiderable amount of help 
from the chent. She has only to give the 
broad outlines of a face for her client to fill 
in the features. The tall, thin man in 
khaki, pressing a handkerchief or photo to 
his heart, is at once metamorphosed by the 
agonised young widow client into the most 
accurate description of her dead husband, 
though goodness alone knows how many 
other sons and husbands the same descrip- 
tion — which became a very common stock- 
in-trade with mediums during the war — has 
previously furnished. Spirits seen on these 
occasions generally have some message to 
give, though how it is conveyed to the 
medium without anyone else being aware 
of it is one of the many mysteries connected 
with the business of mediumship, for a 
business it undoubtedly is — that Spiritualists 
do not attempt to explain. 

The kind of message the medium pro- 
fesses to receive is again of the " fit-easy " 
type, in full accordance with the description 
of the donor. It not infrequently takes this 
form : — 

Medium : "He (the spirit) says you 



170 MENACE OF SPIEITUALISM 

are to look in the pockets of his clothes — 
or else in the chest of drawers, he isn't 
quite sure which — for a letter he received 
shortly before he left home.'* 

Client: "A letter! How very extra- 
ordinary ! Why, I came across several. 
I wonder which of them he means. Was 
it from a lady? Ask him." 

Medium : " Yes, he says it is that one. 
He wishes you to burn it." 

Client: ''Burn it! Why, I wonder? 
It was from his sister Pat, asking him to do 
something for her in the city." 

Medium : " Pat ! There, that's the name 
he has been strugghng so hard to say. I 
knew it began with a P, but I could not 
catch the letters that followed." 

Client : ' ' How very extraordinary ! 
Tell him I will do as he wishes directly I 
get home . Has he anything further to say ? ' ' 
But the spirit has gone, and the client, 
deeply impressed, takes her departure too, 
and informs all her friends what a very 
marvellous medium Madam So-and-So is. 

The photo stunt is another of the regular 
stock-in-hand. All mediums, of course, 
know that during the war soldiers in France 
and at other of the Fronts were frequently 



THE DANGEE OF FEAUD 171 

having their photos taken, so that one of 
the safest possible messages to give is one 
relating to a photograph. 

For example, medium to a war widow who 
has come with express desire to get into 
touch with her dead husband : " I see some- 
thing forming just behind you. (Here 
follows vague description of khaki figure 
that is at once identified by desperate 
client.) He says he has something he very 
much wishes you to have.'' 

Client : " I wonder what it can be ! I 
thought I had had everything.'' 

Medium: '* It is something he thinks 
would please you — something he had taken 
shortly before he passed away." 

Client: "Ah! I know now! It is 
the photograph, of course. Taken a w^eek 
or so before he was killed. I received 
it quite safely with the rest of his things. 
Please tell him so," and the poor young 
widow comes away fully convinced that the 
spirit of her dead husband has actually come 
to her, and that the medium is truly marvel- 
lous. She httle knows that precisely the 
same message has been offered by that 
same medium to dozens of other war 
widows, though not always, perhaps^ with 



172 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

the same success, and it would undoubtedly 
be hard to convince her that not one of the 
messages dehvered by these clairvoyants 
but could be accounted for on natural 
grounds and in the manner I have 
described. 

A possible solution for the phenomena 
professed to be seen by mediums, and which 
no doubt are, at times, seen by really earnest 
Spiritualists, who practise concentration in 
private, is in projection and the apparent 
materiaHsation of thought forms. From 
my own experience and that of other people 
I have met, I believe it is quite possible, by 
intense concentration (which usually occurs 
when the subject is asleep or is wholly 
unconscious of what he is doing) to bring 
about a separation of the material from the 
immaterial body, and for the latter to travel 
considerable distances and to be seen or 
heard, sometimes both, either individually 
or collectively ; but I am certain this cannot 
be done to order, any more than can the 
materialisation of any thought form; so 
that, as far as pubhc or private seances are 
concerned, I think one may rule out this 
solution altogether, and attribute anything 
the chents profess to see, either to pure 



THE DANGER OF FEAUD 173 

hallucination, often largely aided by sug- 
gestion on the part of someone present, 
usually the medium or an accomplice, or to 
faking, which, without doubt, frequently 
takes place. If men such as the late F. W. 
H. Myers, Edmund Gurney, and Frank 
Podmore, who had won a world-wide 
reputation as psychical researchers, could 
be hoaxed in the manner described by 
Mr Douglas Blackburn in a letter to the 
Sunday Times of 16th September, 1917, 
how much more easily can those Spirit- 
uaHsts and others, who seek phenomena for 
the express purpose of believing in them, 
be deceived. No one, however eminent, is 
absolute proof against trickery. Eobberies 
ere now have actually taken place under 
the noses of chief constables. 

Now with regard to the aura medium. 
People may have auras or they may not; 
the matter is at present purely speculative. 
No proof one way or the other has, or, as 
far as I can see, can be afforded. But th^ 
moment one person declared they could see 
an aura, and it was ascertained that there 
was money in it, dozens followed suit, until 
aura-seers are as common now as psychome- 
trists or table-tilters. Of course it is very 



174 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

easy to pretend one sees colours. One 
has only to be something of an actor, we 
can then see any colour, and no one can 
disprove it. Only, you must never see the 
wrong colours. If some obviously coarse, 
vulgar, ignorant, flashly dressed woman 
comes to consult you about her aura, you 
must not tell her what you or any other 
rational and ordinarily observant person 
would think, you must be both psychic and 
subtle; the two terms, by-the-bye, would 
seem to be pretty well synonymous. You 
must half -close your eyes, and, looking at 
her with a dreamy, far-away expression, 
say, in slow and very measured tones : " I 
see pale blue, yellow, and orange; they 
are emanating from all over you ' ' ; and 
when she asks what they signify, you must 
take care to reply, '' Love, love in its 
highest and most mysterious sense; and 
intellect (always tell a woman she is clever, 
arid she will become your client for ever- 
more), and wisdom, not merely ordinary 
wisdom, but psychic wisdom — wisdom that 
comes from the very soul (this is sure 
to score heavily, because women of the 
type I have described are flattered beyond 
measure at being thought to possess soul); 



THE DANGEE OF FEAUD 175 

and power — power to fascinate, and to 
command attention. You might then add, 
" You are quite unhke anyone else, you 
have a strong and arrestive personaHty," 
and the thing is done. 

If you see an aura Hke this (and most 
aura-seers do) you are certain to succeed, 
and will eventually become known as one 
of the most famous psychists in existence; 
and, after all, the harm you do — if you 
do any harm at all, beyond ridding the 
w^ealthier classes of a little of their super- 
fluous cash and pandering to their eternal 
craving for flattery — is small in comparison 
to the harm done by the majority of 
mediums in the other lines I have 
indicated. 

I was once told how an aura-teller was 
somewhat neatly caught. A lady journalist 
went to one, and was so pleased with what 
he professed to see around her that she 
thought she would go to him again. Now, 
it so happened that, just about this time, she 
was invited to a fancy dress ball at Chelsea, 
and, having had her hair cut quite close 
to her head, she decided to go as a boy. 
Before the event took place, however, the 
impulse seized her to try the effect of her 



176 MENACE OF SPIEITUALISM 

costume first, so she put it on and went 
to the aura-seer in it. He obviousl}^ did 
not recognise her, and, greatly to her dis- 
appointment, the aura he now declared he 
saw differed very essentially from the one 
he had described on the occasion of her 
first visit. 

Trumpet mediums are now very much 
in vogue, and from what I have been told, 
I should say they must be making an 
extremely good thing of it. Their fees, I 
believe, vary from half a sovereign to a 
sovereign, and even more if the sitting is 
private. The same sort of thing takes 
place at their exhibitions as happens at 
the table and clairvoyant seances. Spirits 
come, whenever the medium so wills it, and 
notify their presence by talking or sing- 
ing through a species of trumpet. The 
voices sometimes sound very hollow and 
mechanical, and sometimes bear a certain 
curious resemblance to tTie voices of the 
mediums themselves. Invariably, there are 
people at these seances who are only too 
ready to identify one or other of the voices 
with the voice of a dead relative, the 
identification being very materially aided 
by suggestion, either oU the part of the 



THE DANGER OF FRAUD 177 

medium or someone else present. These 
clients would not be quite so eager to claim 
acquaintance with the voices, perhaps, if 
they did but know that, at previous seances 
given by the same medium, voices exactly 
like them had been claimed by countless 
other clients. 

You ask, how are the voices produced? 
Well, that, perhaps, is not for me to say. 
However, I cannot believe they are the 
voices they pretend to be. Can any sane 
person really think the spirits of their dead 
relatives would come at the bidding of a 
stranger — usually one who is none too 
edifying — in order, with their permission, 
to speak through a trumpet ! If they 
possessed the power to return thus promis- 
cuously — I believe they do possess the 
power to return at times, but only on 
rare occasions, when they appear to us 
quite spontaneously — they would assuredly 
acquaint us of their presence in a rather 
more dignified manner. No, if the voices 
proceed from spirits at all, they can only 
proceed from those of a very mischievous 
and vulgar class, that specialise in imitating 
the voices of their superiors, and in deceiv- 
ing the poor anxious bereaved ones on this 

M 



178 MENACE OF SPIEITUALISM 

earth, who are only too ready to clutch at 
any straw that will bring them the comfort- 
ing conviction that those who have passed 
away are not utterly annihilated. I do not, 
however, think the spirit explanation is at 
all feasible in this case; I think it far more 
probable that the voices are either produced 
by ventriloquism — and it is a significant 
fact that most trumpet mediums are of 
the same physical type and have the same 
peculiarities with regard to the develop- 
ment of throat and chest as professional 
ventriloquists — or else they are due to some 
mechanical contrivance, such as I have no 
doubt any skilled conjurer could manipulate. 
The messages purporting to be delivered by 
the spirit voices are, invariably, I beHeve, 
of the same vague and worthless nature as 
those "spirit'' messages to which I have 
already alluded. 

I now come to the question of automatic 
writing. Here, again, although I am of 
the opinion that messages from a bond fide 
spirit world may come at times, I believe 
that where such is the case the spirits 
communicate quite spontaneously. I do 
not believe that any attempt on our part 
to attract spirits of the dead for the purpose 



THE DANGEE OF FRAUD 179 

of commuiiication through writing, saving 
when they are already present, for some 
such specific purpose as haunting, is at all 
likely to succeed; although I think that if 
we sat long enough, pencil in hand, concen- 
trating on some denizen of the other world 
coming to our side, some very undesirable 
type of spirit — perhaps of the nature of 
the demons in the Bible — might eventually 
accept our invitation, and that, once having 
come, it would be very loath to leave us. 
I am firmly persuaded, also, that this is the 
only class of spirit at all likely to respond 
to the invitation of professional automatic 
writers, who can never point to any but the 
most trite and worthless messages received, 
and whose intellectual capacities and moral 
characters are seldom — if ever — of an order 
in the .least degree likely to attract the 
spirits of the really clever or the really good. 
There are very few specimens of auto- 
matic writing that have ever impressed me 
as being in the least degree remarkable, or 
that could not be accounted for by sugges- 
tion, invention, auto-hypnotism, hysteria, 
or some other such natural cause. As has 
been already suggested in a previous chapter 
the human mind is very complex, and it 



180 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

seems to me an absolute certainty that what 
is known as the subconscious self is respon- 
sible for much that is at present attributed 
to the super-physical. Then, again, is it 
not more than likely that the temptation 
to make the hand write something, just to 
break the awful monotony of waiting, would 
be altogether too strong for most people to 
resist — especially if money were attached 
to it. Until Yve exhaust all possibiHty of 
natural agency playing the title-role in 
automatic writing seances, which, despite 
the claims to the contrary made by certain 
eminent Spiritualists, we certainly have not 
done as yet, I do not think we are at 
all justified in assuming that the so-called 
automatic writing has anything whatever to 
do with spirits of the dead. I am quite 
sure I am just as psychic as any Spiritualist, 
and I am equally sure certain of my rela- 
tives who have passed away are as dear 
to me as any Spiritualists' relatives are 
dear to them, yet I have never received 
any communication through a professional 
medium from even one of those I love, 
indeed, from any one of the many whom I 
know, who are now in the other world. 
It is true professional automatic writers 



THE DANGER OF FEADD 181 

have given me messages which they have 
declared came from spirit friends of mine, 
but since these messages have always been 
elastic enough to fit anyone, and identified 
only with some such name as Dick, or Jack, 
or Mary, I could never see in them any 
proof whatever of spirit intercourse. It 
is disappointing that after all we have been 
led to expect from the alleged wonderful 
communications the American medium, 
Mrs Piper, and various other mediums, 
equally well known in this country, were 
supposed to be receiving from the spirit of 
the late F. W. H. Myers, the matter some- 
how seems to have been allowed to drop. 
At all events the result was, as far as I 
am aware, never made known in the news- 
papers or any other organ that the public 
could easily get at. That Sir Oliver Lodge 
had a very great respect for Mrs Piper's 
powers is very apparent from certain state- 
ments (see p. Ill) in his work " The 
Survival of Man.'' (Methuen & Co.) 
" Mrs Piper's trance personality," he 
writes, "is undoubtedly aware of much to 
which she has no kind of ordinarily recog- 
nised clue, and of which in her ordinary 
state she knows nothing." 



182 MENACE OF SPIEITUALI8M 

Despite this exalted view of her, how- 
ever, and the trumpeting both she and 
others of her ilk, engaged in the same 
alleged correspondence with the dead, get 
from Sir Oliver Lodge, nothing seems to 
have come of it all, and those outside the 
inner circle, who are seeking information, 
are still left wondering. Now it is hardly 
fair, and hardly probable, I think, that a 
matter of such vital importance as a definite 
proof of another life (which is what countless 
people would give everything they possess to 
receive) should be the monopoly of a select 
few. Yet, from the hints given in "The 
Survival of Man,*' and other utterances 
of Sir Oliver Lodge, one cannot but con- 
clude that such a proof has been obtained. 
At the same time I have perused various 
accounts of the Piper, Thompson, Verrall, 
and Holland so-called spirit communications, 
and, so far, looked for this proof in vain. 

The sort of things that happens in 
these cross-correspondences is that Mrs A. 
in America, for example, and Mrs B. in 
England both sit down, pretty well simul- 
taneously, to write. Mrs A. begins a 
sentence , perhaps, in Latin; Mrs B. ends 
it, and the seijtence is declared to be a 



THE DANGER OF FRAUD 183 

quotation that was constantly used by 
Mr C, who is dead. Now as both Mrs A. 
and Mrs B. vow and declare they do not 
know Latin, and are totally unacquainted 
with any of the late Mr C/s pet phrases, it is 
concluded by the great experts in psychical 
research that the spirit of Mr C. had been 
communicating wath both these ladies. 

That is, possibly, the proof we are 
seeking, but can any sane person accept it? 
Obviously the integrity of the ladies con- 
cerned has never been called into question, 
because Sir Oliver Lodge and certain other 
of the more Spiritualistic members of the 
S.P.R. have perfect confidence in them. 
But this kind of proof will never do for 
the man of common sense — the man in 
the street. He wants some much more 
substantial guarantee as to the integrity of 
meditims than the mere opinions of a 
psychical life, before he satisfies himself 
that the knowledge displayed in their alleged 
cross-correspondences is derived through 
the agency of the dead. He wants absolute 
proof — proof without any loophole what- 
ever, that the mediums engaged in the 
;work were not in collusion, did not derive 
their knowledge from information obtained 



184 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

beforehand, or that what they wrote was 
not due to pure coincidence, and so far, in 
my opinion at least, no such proof has been 
forthcoming. If it had, all the world 
would believe, and all the world is very far 
from doing that. 

Sir Oliver Lodge seems particularly 
anxious to convince his readers with 
regard to the psychic powers of Mrs 
Verrall. In " The Survival of Man,'' for 
example, we read (p. 335), "The fame of 
Mrs Piper has spread into all lands, and I 
should think the fame of Mrs Verrall also. 
In these recent cases of automatism the 
Society has been singularly fortunate, for 
in the one we have a medium who has been 
under strict supervision and competent 
management for the greater part of her 
psychical life (psychical life indeed !) ; 
and in the other we have one of the 
sanest and acutest (I certainly believe in 
the acuteness, though it is rather doubtful 
if the author of ' Raymond ' is much of 
a judge on sanity) of our own investi- 
gators, fortunately endowed with some 
power herself — some power of acting as 
translator or interpreter between the 
psychic and the physical worlds." 



THE DANGEE OF FEAUD 185 

We are given some idea of the nature 
and quality of Mrs Verrall's power in " The 
Survival of Man" (see pp. 156 and 300). 
It is quite in keeping with the power that 
is responsible for the messages concerning 
the whiskies-and-sodas in " Eaymond," 
and, in my opinion, just about as psychic. 
The remarks I recently made in connection 
with a certain correspondence are equally 
applicable to the case in hand; before Mrs 
Verrall credits herself with being psychic 
she must eliminate all possibihty of fluke 
and all possibility of any knowledge dis- 
played in her alleged spirit-inspired writings 
being derived by her beforehand, and 
retained in her subconscious mind; and 
until she has done that she is not, in my 
opinion, at all justified in claiming that 
she is in the remotest degree psychic. At 
present we have her word, I take it, that 
no such knowledge as that exhibited was 
previously acquired by her. Sir OHver 
Lodge is apparently content to accept it; 
I am not, because the testimony of one 
single person is no evidence. That, I was 
always given to understand, was one of the 
maxims of the 8.P.E. 

In reference to these cases Mrs Verrall 



186 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

may, perhaps, possess absolute integrity; 
on the other hand she may not. Who can 
judge? Obviously, no one but Mrs Verrall 
herself. No one else, and least of all Sir 
Oliver Lodge, who, in '' Eaymond," as well 
as in " The Survival of Man," shows that 
where the other sex are concerned he is the 
very acme of creduHty. I might add that 
my statements concerning Mrs Verrall will 
apply in an equal degree to Mrs Thompson 
and Mrs Holland, other mediums mentioned 
in the above works, and in whom also Sir 
Oliver Lodge would appear to place the 
very greatest confidence. With regard to 
these two works (i.e., " The Survival of 
Man'' and "Raymond'*), their whole 
tone, in my opinion, is one of extreme 
arbitrariness and self-importance, quite in 
keeping with the character of Spiritualists 
in general. 

The same spirit is, I think, displayed 
by Sir A. C. Doyle, when discussing the 
subject of Spirituahsm in the Sunday Times 
(see correspondence, 1917) and The Nation 
(1919); and when one reflects that the 
accusation brought against the Churches 
by Spiritualists, more frequently than any 
other, is that they are autocratic and intol- 



THE DANGER OF FRAUD 187 

erant, it is not very easy to repress a smile. 
In my opinion a desperate attempt is now 
being made to firmly plant Spiritualism on 
the nation, and to thrust it in the place of 
the present State Church. I can quite well 
see in my mind's eye a new archbishop in 
the person of Sir Oliver Lodge, bishops 
in the persons of Sir W. F. Barrett, Sir A. 
C. Doyle, and, perhaps, Mr J. A. Hill, 
and vicars innumerable in the persons of 
known and unknown mediums. A school 
or institute for training psychics is already 
in the mind, and doubtless such schools or 
institutes will, in time, supplant the present 
theological colleges. This idea of rehgious 
revolution may seem baseless and visionary, 
but I verily beHeve a colossal effort on the 
part of Spirituahsts will be made to bring 
it about, and I am quite certain, if it 
is accomplished, the State Spiritualistic 
Church (if such you could designate it) 
would be ten thousand times more dog- 
matic, arrogant, and bigoted than any 
State Church we have hitherto known. 

But to revert again to so-called cross- 
correspondences. There is another point 
that has to be considered when deahng with 
them, and that is the question of identity. 



188 MENACE OF SPIEITUALISM 

Supposing the communications were actually 
due to spirit agency, what proof have we 
that that agency is what it professes to be? 
Surely it would not be difficult for a 
mischievous, clever, and cunning spirit to 
impersonate the spirit of F. W. H. Myers, 
Edmund Gurney, or Professor Hodgson. 
Being behind the scenes, so to speak, it 
would surely have some means of ascer- 
taining at least one or two of the character- 
istics and idiosyncrasies of any one of 
those three gentlemen when they lived on 
this material plane — and who could detect 
the difference? No living being, because 
— despite all that has been proffered by 
mediums as information hailing from the 
other world — we know absolutely nothing 
about spirits — we cannot say of what they 
are composed, or in any way define or limit 
their capabilities. They are, so far at all 
events, completely outside our ken. 

Moreover, it is but feasible to suppose 
that some of this cross-correspondence 
would be due to impersonation, since 
such trickery would only coincide with the 
silly phenomena claimed by Spiritualists as 
taking place at table-tilting and trumpet- 
speaking seances. In all probabihty, the 



THE DANGER OF FRAUD 189 

spirits that derive amusement from tilting 
tables, banging tambourines, and putting 
sweets in people's mouths, are only too 
ready, for the sake of variety, to seize the 
opportunity of impersonating their superiors. 
Before passing on to another branch of 
mediumistic display, let me refer briefly to 
a matter of no little importance, namely, 
the training of psychics. It will be remem- 
bered that in speaking of Mrs Piper I quoted 
certain extracts from Sir Oliver Lodge, one 
of which contained the words, *' who has 
Keen under strict supervision and competent 
management." This, of course, can only 
mean that Mrs Piper was undergoing a 
process of so-called development. Of what 
that process consists I neither know nor 
can conceive, iior can I imagine who the 
competent trainers could be, since, con- 
sidering the fact that the forces constituting 
the other world are at present wholly 
unknown to us, it is quite inconceivable 
that anyone should lay claim to any com- 
petency whatever concerning them. In 
order to train a pupil you must have some 
knowledge, at all events, of the subject in 
which you intend training him. And who 
is there that can claim to be an authority 



190 MENACE OF SPIEITUALISM 

on such a debatable subject as the psychic 
faculty? Sk Oliver Lodge cannot, nor can 
Sir W. F. Barrett, nor Mrs Thompson, nor 
Mrs Verrall, for, as far as I can see, they 
have not given the slightest proof that they 
possess any power whatever to get in touch 
or to communicate with another world, and 
it is that power, I take it, that the so-called 
psychic faculty is supposed to represent. 

The training of psychics then means that 
an attempt is being made to develop the 
psychic faculty in those who are supposed 
to possess it, but who, in all probabihty, 
do not possess it, by people who know no 
more of what the super-physical embraces 
than do those whom they are profess- 
ing to instruct. But what these self- 
styled professors of psychism can help to 
develop is hysteria, and that they are 
doing daily. They develop hysteria in some 
of their pupils and unwittingly encourage 
trickery in others, so that the work they 
are doing is without doubt both injurious 
and demorahsing. One would Hke to know 
how many of these trained mediums have 
ended in becoming hopeless degenerates 
or confirmed tricksters. The records of 
mediumship will reveal much. 



THE DANGER OF FRAUD 191 

I now come to the question of psy- 
chometry. This, in my opinion, is almost 
invariably done either by pure trickery or 
else by mere inference from the client's 
personal appearance. At meetings where 
a number of articles are collected and put 
into a box, the box is quickly changed by 
an accomphce and an empty one substituted 
in its place. This can easily be done under 
cover of conversation — the psychometrists 
are generally wind-bags — or some sudden 
little noise or disturbance, just sufficient to 
divert the audience's attention from the 
box. An accomphce then communicates 
to the medium, generally by a code of 
signals made with the face, hands, feet, or 
tappings under the floor, or, if the medium 
wears a mask, by a telephone, the wire of 
which can be very easily and effectually 
hidden from the audience, a description of 
the articles and any initials or other marks 
on them. The medium at once makes 
use of this information in the manner, 
practice has taught her, will most impress 
the audience. On these occasions any- 
thing, however shghtly true, is sure to be 
proclaimed wonderful; the audience have 
come there wanting to believe, and are 



192 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

more than half convinced before the 
performance begins. 

There is nothing that a professional 
psychometrist does, either at a public or a 
private sitting, that could not be done by 
any fairly competent professional conjurer, 
and probably done better. All that the 
psychometrist requires who sees her clients 
privately (ostensibly on the grounds that 
one seldom gets the right psychic conditions 
in public places), and thereby avoids all 
danger of such exposure, as once overtook 
the slate medium, Dr " Slade,'' is a shrewd 
knowledge of human nature, some power 
to draw inferences from physiognomy, an 
ability to play the part of detective and 
acquire information by prying into and 
ferretting out family secrets, and an un- 
limited amount of assurance (the two last- 
named requisites coming readily and 
naturally to many women). The rest is 
merely a matter of practice. Hundreds 
are at it, and there will be hundreds more, 
so long as society women continue to hunt 
around for novelty and sensation and their 
husbands are silly enough to allow them 
money to spend on such tomfoolery. If 
there were no money in psychometry. 



THE DANGER OF FRAUD 193 

there would be no psychometrists. It is 
astonishing to find how much the so- 
called psychic faculty is regulated by the 
money market. Before the war, when 
Society spent most of its money abroad, 
London had comparatively few professional 
mediums; but as soon as the war came, 
and mothers and widows were ready to pay 
anything to get in touch with their relatives, 
hundreds of people suddenly found out that 
they were psychics, and immediately styled 
themselves "professional clairvoyants,'' 
" psychometrists," or " trance mediums ' ; 
black magic, too, sprang up, and may now 
be said to have a by no means small 
cHentele. At a fantastical exhibition of 
" black magic " in Chelsea, to which I had 
gone with a party of friends, after being 
led to expect that the room would suddenly 
fill wdth all kinds of ethereal demons, the 
only thing any of us saw, in the least degree 
like our preconceived notion of a devil, was 
the magician himself. At the same time I 
think it quite possible that if one continually 
invites the intercourse of hellish spirits, 
offering them, so to say, a free passage and 
free field, one might succeed in getting in 
touch with them, and that — without the aid 

N 



194 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

of any of those particular mystical words 
and symbols experimenters in the black art 
tell me are indispensable. 

I do not propose to deal here with the 
different kinds of black magic now in vogue 
— they are all the result of this present mad 
craze for Spiritualism — but, I might say 
that from what I can gather, hypnotism and 
suggestion, as in Spiritualism, probably 
play an important role in most of them, 
whilst in a few there is unquestionably 
something very filthy and disgusting. Of 
course many of the mediums who profess 
to be exponents of black raagic are pure 
fakers, and, perhaps, beyond mere trickery 
would stoop to nothing worse, but there are 
some, I am convinced, who make so-called 
initiation an excuse for the perpetration of 
acts only likely to attract the very lowest 
and foulest type of spirit ; and I would most 
solemnly warn all those, at least, who have 
no desire to lose money and self-respect 
too, to shun this subject and give it the 
very widest berth possible. 

Spiritualism (excluding black magic, of 
course) numbers among its advocates 
scientists like Sir Oliver Lodge, Sir W. F. 
Barrett, Sir William Crookes, Professors 



THE DANGEE OF FEAUD 195 

Janet, Bernheim, Lombroso, Flammarion, 
and others. Equally clever and prominent 
men, however, are opposed to it, and I 
now intend quoting a few extracts from 
the writings and letters of the latter. 
First of all, I will refer to Sir Eay 
Lankester, K.C.B., F.E.8., whose writings 
are singularly free from any of that egotism 
and bumptious fanaticism that is so char- 
acteristic of the writings of Spiritualists, 
such as Sir Oliver Lodge, Sir A. C. Doyle, 
and others. 

In the January number of Bedrock 
(1913), Sir Eay Lankester writes, apropos 
of Sir Oliver and telepathy, " Sir Oliver 
Lodge, when president of the Psychical 
Eesearch Society, some years ago, actually 
went so far as to assert that the society 
had achieved a great result; it had, he 
said, ' discovered ' telepathy. We all know 
what the word ' discovery ' means in the 
statement of a professional man of science. 
It means not that a guess or fancy has been 
put forward, but that the thing said to be 
' discovered ' has been demonstrated to 
exist by evidence which bears the test of 
strict examination as to its truth — evidence 
which can be produced and subjected again 



196 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

and again to searching criticism." Just 
such a test as I have suggested should be 
apphed by the outside pubhc to Mrs Verrall 
and other of the mediums Sir OHver Lodge 
and his confreres have so persistently 
bolstered up. "At the time I challenged," 
(in a letter to the Press) Sir Ray Lankester 
continues, " Sir Oliver Lodge's statement 
that telepathy had been ' discovered/ I 
asked for the demonstration necessary to 
justify the assertion that telepathy had been 
' discovered.' I professed my willingness to 
investigate this phenomena stated to occur 
in our midst and its asserted discovery. 
No opportunity of investigating it has ever 
been offered to me by those who declare 
that it exists. I was definitely refused 
the opportunity of examining the asserted 
phenomenon for which I applied to the 
Society for Psychical Research. No 
evidence establishing experimentally the 
existence of ' telepathy ' has been published 
by Sir Oliver Lodge or by his associates." 
And so it is with regard to the wonder- 
ful proofs alleged to have been obtained 
through cross-correspondence and at the 
table. There has been a marvellous lot 
of trumpeting by the same gentleman and 



THE DANGER OF FRAUD 197 

his associates, but when a proof has been 
demanded for the general pubHc, it has 
been ominously withheld. 

Now let us hear what the same author — 
a scientist every whit as eminent in his own 
line as Sir Oliver Lodge is in his — has 
to say with regard to spirit presences at 
seances. In the new and revised edition of 
"The Kingdom of Man'' (Watts & Co., 
London, 1912), we read (p. 36), '' Modern 
biologists (I am glad to be able to affirm) 
do not accept the hypothesis of ' telepathy ' 
advocated by Sir Oliver Lodge, nor that of 
the intrusions of disembodied spirits pressed 
upon them by others of the same school. 
We biologists take no stock in these 
mysterious entities." 

Next, let us refer to an article b}^ 
Ivor Tuckett, M.A., M.D., entitled "The 
Illogical Position of Some Psychical Re- 
searchers," also in the January, 1913, 
number of Bedrock. In a passage relating 
to Mrs Verrall and Mrs Piper, Dr Ivor 
Tuckett writes, " Then again, it is some- 
times triumphantly asked, how do you ex- 
plain certain cases of cross-correspondence 
or the best of Mrs Piper's trance utterances 
and writings? The answer to this is that 



198 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

on the data supplied a normal explanation 
may not be possible, but that the first 
point to decide is whether the witnesses 
and reporters of the case can be regarded 
as competent; and that if in their other 
writings they have not shown a high 
standard of evidence, or if the will to 
believe is at all noticeable, then, in view 
of the fact that the observations cannot be 
repeated, an agnostic attitude is essentially 
scientific." The witnesses and reporters of 
the phenomena are, invariably, pronounced 
Spiritualists of the order of Sir Oliver Lodge 
and Mr J. A. Hill; but the mere fact that 
the writing might be at one time compatible 
with the truth and at another time not, 
renders it worthless, and, consequently (no 
matter whether it be spirits who lie or the 
mediums, the result is the same), since we 
are never sure that we can depend on it, 
we cannot regard it as of any practical use 
whatever. 

Referring to Mrs Verrall, Dr Tuckett 
obseives, '' On a series of automatic 
writings, where she records the results of 
three hundred and twenty-two experi- 
ments on herself, and where telepathic 
experiments, with the avowed object of 



THE DANGEE OF FRAUD 199 

determining whether information unknown 
to the writer could be conveyed by auto- 
matic writing, were practically unsuccessful. 
Indeed, these experiments very strongly 
suggest, if they do not estabHsh, the fact 
that automatic writing is concerned with 
the reproduction of past experiences or of 
fabrications founded on these experiences. 
The conclusion, then, of this rejoinder is 
that no phenomena requiring a super- 
normal explanation, have yet been recorded 
under conditions sufficiently free from the 
possibility of error as to satisfy a scientific 
standard of research." Which is precisely 
what I have said. 

Again, with regard to Sir Oliver Lodge 
and other of his Spiritualistic associates of 
the S.P.R., Dr Tuckett remarks, "When 
Sir Oliver Lodge ends his article with the 
assertion that the S.P.R. was founded in 
explicit accord with Huxley's dictum about 
the importance of ' the resolution to take 
nothing for truth without clear knowledge 
that it is such,' he forgets to state that 
from the start some of its most prominent 
members have taken the hypotheses of 
'psychic force,' 'telepathy,' and 'Spirit- 
istic interference ' for truth without any 



200 MENACE OF SPIEITUALISM 

clear knowledge they are such." This 
substantiates my assertion that one can 
really place very little reliance on the testi- 
mony of men who, like Sir Oliver Lodge, 
enter the arena of Psychical Eesearch 
entirely biased in favour of believing, who 
are, in fact, out to beheve, in spite of any 
and every obstacle. 

Dr Tuckett soon dismisses Sir Oliver 
Lodge's shadow, Mr J. A. Hill. After 
referring to certain passages (p. 80) in Mr 
HilFs work, '' New Evidences in Psychical 
Eesearch " (a work which bears the hall- 
mark of Spiritualism, namely, a super- 
abundance of high-falutin^ expressions and 
would-be scientific terms), Dr Tuckett 
proceeds: "In fact the evidence which 
has driven him (Mr Hill) to believe in 
psychometry consists of the uncritical 
stories of a few friends and of his own 
unverified experience on one or perhaps 
two occasions." And, again, " Mr Hill, 
as revealed in his writings, is really rather 
an interesting psychological study, because 
he clearly recognises the need of ' careful 
observation and experiment, scrupulously 
accurate recording, and cautious inferring ' 
(' New Evidences in Psychical Eesearch,' 



THE DANGEE OF FRAUD 201 

p. 212. Rider, London, 1911), and at the 
same time shows that he has had no prac- 
tical training in exercising these quahties " 
— remarks that might surely be applied to 
all who attempt to bolster up Spiritualism 
and mediums. 

I will now turn to an article entitled 
" Science and Spiritualism," by Sir Bryan 
Donkin, M.D., F.R.C.P., also in the 
January, 1913, number of Bedrock. In 
it we read, " The present writer has had 
considerable experience in the past of 
spiritualistic seances of many kinds, both 
public and private (in a footnote it is 
stated that he attended seances held by 
Corner (nee F. Cook), Annie Eva Fay, 
WilHams, Hearne, Hush, and Eghngton — 
all well-known mediums of their time), 
including manifestations of ' thought 
transference,' and also of what is now 
called ' automatic writing ' with and with- 
out the aid of the ingenious instrument 
known as planchette; and he has found, as 
many others have found (myself amongst 
the number) that difficulty or impossibility 
of applying crucial tests of the occurrence 
of phenomena as alleged has always coin- 
cided with the existence of certain prelim- 



202 MENACE OF SPIRTTUALTSM 

inary conditions postulated as necessary 
for the manifestations." The pretext of 
mediums that it is very harmful and 
injurious to spirits to be touched, or 
experimented upon in any way during the 
so-called materialisation, is, of course, all 
bunkum. Spirits that manifest themselves 
spontaneously in haunted houses experience 
no harm when chairs are thrown at them, 
so why should those at seances. The con- 
clusion is obvious. 

But to continue the quotation from Sir 
Bryan's article: "Without further illus- 
trating here from his own experience this 
quasi-pathological study of ' Psychics ' and 
their prophets and disciples, or quoting 
the numerous cases where appropriate 
tests were apphed and the manifestations 
declined or disappeared as the crucial 
test was approached or attained; or where 
the results either demonstrated or directly 
indicated a well-known agency in the 
production of the phenomena; or where 
mistaken observations, or illusions, or 
statements and actions which were con- 
fessedly fraudulent, were revealed; he 
maintains, on the grounds set forth above, 
that science is more than fully justified in 



THE DANGER OF FRAUD 203 

leaving the jewels of Psychical Research to 
be ploughed by those who please/' This 
is a pretty sure guide to what Sir Bryan 
really thinks on this subject. 

Further on he says, " The more fre- 
quently instances of some classes of 
' occult ' phenomena have been confessedly 
proved to be due to misconception or to 
manifest trickery " — (this referring to the 
movements of pieces of furniture, material- 
isation and tangibility of spirit-forms) — 
" the more such classes are neglected or 
ignored, essential though they were to the 
Spiritualistic propaganda of the not far 
distant past " — (many Spirituahsts still 
believe in them) — " and the more stress is 
laid on other kinds of alleged phenomena " 
— (automatic writing, for instance) — " that 
have been less often actually and severally 
demonstrated to be due to similar origins." 

Sir Bryan goes on to add that it is often 
announced from the pulpit (I suppose he 
means the Spiritualistic pulpit) and platform 
that '* the materialistic science " of the last 
century has given way to the scientific 
philosophy of such present-day teachers as 
Professor Bergson, and that the prophets of 
Psychical Research are now clamouring to 



204 MENACE OF SPIEITUALISM 

be recognised as " scientific " students of 
the " super-normal." " But/' Sir Bryan 
remarks, '' those who recognise no scien- 
tific revolution, nor any victory over the 
accepted methods of scientific research 
by any philosophies whatever, regard all 
such attempts at reconciliation as mere 
logomachy, and say of such as, in the 
name of Science, would abrogate scientific 
method, ' they make a Desert, and call it 
Peace.' " Spiritualists would do well to 
ponder over this when boasting their cause 
is advocated by the scientific world. 

Lastly, Sir Bryan issues a warning which, 
I think, should have special significance 
for all those dabbling in Spiritualism. 
'' Much," he says, '' might be said of the 
multiform harm resulting from the advo- 
cacy of ' Psychical Eesearch ' (in its current 
and peculiar sense). But, in order to avoid 
any possible confusion of the issue, the 
writer has purposely omitted all reference 
to this from his argument." 

I now come to a work by Lionel A. 
Weatherly, M.D., and J. N. Maskelyne. 
It is called " The Supernatural " (pubhshed 
by J. W. Arrowsmith, Bristol). On the 
title page confronting a dedication to 



THE DANGER OF FRAUD 205 

Daniel Hack Tuke, M.D., we find these 
very appropriate lines by Dr Maudsley : 
" If all visions, intuitions, and other modes 
of communication with the supernatural, 
accredited now or at any time, have been 
no more than phenomena of psychology — 
instances, that is, of sub-normal, supra- 
normal, or abnormal mental function — and 
if all existing supernatural beliefs are 
survivals of a state of thought befitting 
lower stages of human development, the 
continuance of such beliefs cannot be 
helpful, it must be hurtful to human 
progress." 

In this work the mediumistic side of 
Spiritualism is summed up very neatly by 
Mr J. N. Maskelyne. '' The doctrine of so- 
called Spirituahsm," he says (see p. 183), 
" embodies an abstract principle and a 
concrete fact — the principle being ' that 
those who have plenty of money and no 
brains were made for those who have plenty 
of brains and no money ' ; and the fact is 
that the ranks of the Spiritualists have ever 
been largely recruited from these two 
classes." 

Referring to the notorious American 
mediums, the Fox sisters, the same author 



J 



206 MENACE OF SPIEITUALISM 

remarks (p. 187): " Speaking of the Fox 
girls, the Professors of the Medical College, 
Buffalo, said that these loosely constructed 
girls got their raps by snapping their toe 
and knee joints." On the same page, again, 
is the following quotation, which refers to 
the confession made by Mrs Norman Culver, 
a relation of the Fox family : " . . . but 
something I (Mrs Culver) saw when I was 
visiting the girls at Eochester made me 
suspect they were deceiving. I resolved to 
satisfy myself in some way, and some time 
afterwards I made a proposition to Catherine 
to assist her in producing the manifesta- 
tions. . . . After I had helped her in this 
way for some time, she revealed to me the 
secrets. The raps are produced by the 
toes. All the toes are used. After a 
week's practice with Catherine showing 
me how, I could produce them perfectly 
myself." And no doubt this is how many 
of the rappings are done by mediums at 
table-turning seances to-day. It is signifi- 
cant to note that all New York State went 
mad over these supposed great psychics, 
just as London is going mad over other 
supposed great psychics at the present 
moment. 



THE DANGER OF FRAUD 207 

In connection with the famous medium, 
Daniel Douglas Hume , who, to quote 
Mr Maskelyne's words (p. 189), " wound 
his way into the best society, always 
despising filthy lucre, but never refusing 
a diamond worth ten times the amount he 
would have received in cash," we are told 
he got involved in a law-suit by pretending 
to get such messages from the spirit of a 
dead man, as induced the latter's widow to 
give him thirty thousand pounds. The suit 
went against him — as even his confreres 
were forced to admit, very justly — and, 
like a good many mediums have done 
since, he fizzled out. 

With regard to Miss Annie Eva Fay, 
another American medium who duped 
thousands of people in this country, 
Mr Maskelyne writes, " Her seance was 
the most transparent trickery all through; 
so simple, indeed, that in a few days I 
taught my colleague the whole of her tricks, 
and he performed them at the Egyptian 
Hall, whilst Miss Fay was holding seances 
at the Hanover Square Rooms. The result 
of this was that Miss Fay made a very short 
stay in London." 

Apropos of Dr Slade, the slate- writing 



208 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

medium, Mr Maskelyne remarks, '* How- 
ever, from the reports of my deputies and 
others, the secrets were in my possession 
within a few weeks, and I was planning a 
grand exposure, when Professor Lancaster 
and the late Dr Donkin caught the gentle- 
man red-handed, and prosecuted him and 
his manager." 

Mr Maskelyne deals with so-called 
materialisations, table-turning, thought- 
reading, and spirit photography in the 
same work, and what he thinks of them all 
he suggests in a nutshell, when referring 
(see p. 205) to the report of a certain 
commission of inquiry into these several 
branches of professional mediumship. 
'' Of genuine manifestations," he writes, 
" they found absolutely none — not one 
single indication of anything that could 
not be accounted for by the most puerile 
trickery "; and with these observations we 
will leave him. I can only add that the 
work of which he and Dr Weatherly are 
the joint authors should be read by all 
persons who are contemplating attending 
a stance. 

Other works that I would strongly 
recommend these same people should read 



THE DANGEE OF FRAUD 209 

(in addition to most of those from which 
I have already quoted) are Dr Charles 
Mercier's " Spiritualism and Sir Oliver 
Lodge," and Mr J. Godfrey Raupert's 
' ' The Dangers of Spiritualism ' ' (Kegan 
Paul, Trench, Triibner & Co., 1906). 

In the latter work (p. 143) we find the 
following : ' * The exercise of mediumship 
is almost always attended by physical 
exhaustion, very frequently by complete 
mental prostration, producing a kind of 
moral paralysis and inertia of the will. 
Sometimes there are cataleptic seizures, 
contortions of the muscles of the face which 
are terrible to witness, and which are, 
all of them, conditions awakening disgust 
in all healthy and normally constituted 
minds." And again (see p. 145), " What- 
ever the scientific explanation of these 
physical accompaniments may be, is it 
likely, considering the debasing effect they 
have on most minds, that Providence would 
employ such ignoble and unworthy means 
with a view to the higher moral advance- 
ment of mankind? " 

Regarding the question of identity, 
Mr Raupert apparently shares my views. 
He says (p. 115), " The absolute futility 





210 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

of any attempt at identifying spirits is 
another discouraging or unsatisfactory 
circumstance. It is no proof that the 
spirit communicating is A. B. if he tells me 
of words or circumstances (supposed to be) 
known only to A. B. and myself. Who 
knows how many spirits are more or less 
eavesdropping in every time and place! " 
A somewhat unusual view of the subject 
was taken by the late George Macdonald. 
In his work, " The Miracles of Our Lord/' 
he says, for instance (p. 160), '' There 
seems to me nothing unreasonable in the 
supposition of the existence of spirits who, 
having once had such bodies as ours, and 
having abused the privileges of embodi- 
ment, are condemned for a season to roam 
about bodiless, ever mourning the loss of 
their capacity for the only pleasures they 
care for, and craving after them in their 
imagination. Such, either in selfish hate 
of those who have what they have lost, or 
from eagerness to come as near the pos- 
session of a corporeal form as they may, 
might well seek to ' enter into a man.' " 

Another author from whom I will quote 
briefly is Mr Edward Clodd, and the follow- 
ing extracts from his letter to the Sunday 



THE DANGER OF FEAUD 211 

Times (7th October, 1917) will, I think, 
very well serve to indicate his attitude 
towards Spiritualism and some of those who 
practise it. 

' ' The corrective to any tendency to 
believe in the delusion," he writes, " is 
supplied by a study of animistic ideas, such 
as is given in Tylor's ' Primitive Culture/ 
Therein is clearly set forth the origin and 
growth of early man's conception of a soul 
and a future life, upon which no further 
light has been thrown by this pretentious 
Spiritualism. It is only the old animism 
writ large." And again, " Instead of 
' about it and about,' with which Spirit- 
ualists are filling your columns, why do 
they not urge their leaders to bring the 
phenomena before the Court of Science, 
where mere personal authority has no value, 
and where, on the principle of getting a 
conjurer to catch a conjurer, Mr Devant 
should be subpoenaed. " 

Mr F. H. Hayward (D.Lit., B.Sc, 
London) also has something interesting to 
say in this controversy on Spiritualism 
going on in the Sunday Times, and the 
following extract is from his letter to that 
paper, pubhshed on 14th October, 1917 : 

''What exactly," he asks, "has Sir 



212 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

Oliver Lodge discovered? What revela- 
tions have come to him through the 
mediums, untrustworthy or otherwise, 
whom he has consulted? Is the whole 
mass of such revelations, even if true, 
worth a schoolboy's consideration? " And 
further on : " Your readers will note the 
evidence of a future life would not be 
necessary for people who believed in the 
Resurrection of Jesus. Like most scien- 
tists, Sir Oliver Lodge and Sir A. C. Doyle 
evidently do not believe — or did not believe 
— in that, otherwise they would not have 
gone fishing for other proofs." 

And, lastly, I refer to some remarks by 
Mr Nevil Maskelyne, also made in the 
Sunday Times, but in a letter pubhshed 
on 28th October, 1917. Referring to the 
question of investigating supposed spiritual 
phenomena, Mr N. Maskelyne observes, 
'' . . . the only people who are really 
competent to undertake an investigation 
are, necessarily, those who have a know- 
ledge of, at least, the modern magic. 
Professed scientists, as a rule, have no 
such knowledge. I very much doubt if 
Sir Oliver Lodge, for example, even knows 
there is such a thing as the theory of 
magic." And he adds, " During the past 



THE DANGER OF FRAUD 213 

thirty years I have, from time to time, 
been associated with my father, the late 
J. N. Maskelyne, in investigations con- 
cerning alleged Spiritualistic phenomena. 
And in all those years I have never dis- 
covered anything that even tends to lend 
colour to the Spirituahstic hypothesis." 

From these extracts and quotations I 
trust it may be gathered (since they have 
been given partly to show) that despite the 
puffing up that Spiritualism — particularly 
the mediumistic side of Spiritualism — is 
receiving at the hands of a cHque of well- 
known scientists and authors, there is still 
a strong consensus of opinion, equally 
expert, against it. I hope I have made it 
quite clear, for example, that the orthodox 
Churches are unanimous in condemning 
Spiritualism on the grounds that it is 
dangerous to faith and morality alike; that 
the medical profession, with little excep- 
tion, oppose it on the grounds that it is 
thoroughly injurious to health; whilst many 
of the most eminent scientists — by far the 
greater number, in fact — ^regard it as a 
sham, maintaining that its phenomena are 
wholly explainable by natural causes, and, 
more often than not, by trickery. To the 
ordinary average man who is neither very 



214 MENACE OF SPIRITUALISM 

religious nor very eminent, but who has 
plenty of common sense, Spiritualism can 
only appear as a hotch-potch of imbecility, 
gullibility, and roguery — a hotch-potch that 
has been of benefit to no one, saving those 
that have filled their pockets out of it. 
To me one of the worst results of this 
popular side of Spiritualism is that it has 
led — and still is leading — to such bitter 
deception and disappointment. Of the 
legions of widows and other bereaved ones 
who have been induced to visit mediums 
through seeing them advertised in books, 
magazines, and newspapers, none, perhaps, 
have been wholly satisfied, and the majority 
have come away with the ache in their 
heart increased rather than diminished. 
It may possibly be said of me that all this 
is inconsistent with the views I have hitherto 
expressed in my writings. Let me observe 
that it is nothing of the kind. It is true 
that I have stated my impHcit behef in 
what are termed ghosts; and in ghosts — in 
haunted houses, and at the time of, or 
immediately subsequent to, death — I have 
always beheved and still most emphatically 
do beheve ; but these ghosts, I would remind 
you, are of a different nature from the type 
of thing we are taught to associate with the 



THE DANGER OF FEAUD 215 

spirit world at seances. It is with regard 
to the latter — the latter only — that I am 
very, very sceptical, and I repeat once 
again that I do not think it at all probable 
that any of the psychics of to-day possess 
the power of evoking or getting in touch 
at will with spirits of the dead; though I 
think it just possible that they may on rare 
occasions and quite by chance succeed in 
attracting spirits of another kind. 

The so-called manifestations we see and 
hear at seances command neither awe nor 
respect, but are merely treated either with 
vulgar familiarity .or with open derision. 
They are a bad, very bad imitation of the 
genuine visitant from another world, and 
they would certainly never take in anyone 
who had ever had any experience whatever 
of a bond fide ghost. 

Lastly, if we must have a change — must 
have something different in the place of our 
present orthodox Churches, and in the place 
of Christianity — for goodness' sake let us 
look around for something that will be both 
edifying and regenerating; for something 
that, unlike Spirituahsm, will make us less 
selfish, less snobbish, less greedy, less 
arrogant, and less hopelessly self-satisfied; 
in short, let us look for something that will 



216 MENACE OF SPIEITUALISM 

develop what few virtues we may happen 
to possess, and not tend — as Spiritualism 
most certainly does tend — to accentuate all 
our old vices and^ what is undoubtedly 
more serious, to create new ones. 



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